Taming the wild with her lens
Wildlife doesn't perform on demand. Lucia has to think and act quickly, and to do that she needs to control the variables wherever she can. "Portraits of wildlife are nice, but what about when there's a kill? What happens when there's a leopard seal about to launch to get one of a group of chinstrap penguins?" In those make-or-break moments, it's essential that Lucia can work with her kit intuitively.
For this reason, she chooses to shoot at fixed focal lengths with Canon prime lenses. "Shooting on telephoto primes might not give me the flexibility to be able to reframe my shot, but it focuses my eye," she says. "I like to see the frame straight away and then bring what I need into the viewfinder. If it doesn't fit, then it's not my shot."
Artistic vision is what separates a great shot from a good one, and Lucia has spent years under waves in Hawaii and surrounded by penguins in the Antarctic, refining hers. Her most striking shots of wildlife subtly convey the drama of the landscape while singling out, and celebrating, the majesty of her subject.
In order to achieve this effect, Lucia relies on the ability to shoot in low light. That's why her preferred lens is "a telephoto lens with an aperture of f/2.8, because I rely on speed. I like to take light away around my subject, underexposing it and then bringing it back in. I'll use strips of natural light to highlight parts of my subject to capture emotion."