Robert E Fuller is a Wildlife Artist, Filmaker and Influencer. His paintings sell for up to £15,000, he’s filmed for the BBC One Show and with a following of 2.2 million across his social media channels, he could possibly have the biggest wildlife following of any independent wildlife content creator in the world.
DJI sat down with Robert to find out more…
In your own words tell us about your content creation in the natural world?
I’ve made it my mission to try and uncover the secret behaviour of animal and birds and I travel the globe to do so. This often needs careful planning. Not only do you need to be in the right place at the right time, but in order for animals to act naturally, they need to be comfortable with where the photographer and equipment is in relation to them, so they can carry on with their daily activities undisturbed.
Is there anything in particular you’ve always wanted to capture?
Filming a sloth mother and baby has long been on my bucket list and when I was invited to travel to Tranquilo Bay in Panama, I leapt at the chance. I started to investigate what I would need to do to film them. Sloths are notoriously slow and spend much time sleeping or resting, so allowing a plenty of time to achieve shots of behaviour and movement would be important.
How do you approach capturing a sloth on camera?
Sloths only occasionally visit the forest floor, most of their time is spent in the treetops or when it’s hot lower down in the canopy. So, I needed to consider how me and my team could film at height. I packed my DJI Mavic 3 drone, Pocket 2, Ronin RS3 Pro and DJI Transmission and we set off.
On the first day I spotted a brown-throated sloth resting on a rock beneath a tall cecropia tree. I watched mesmerised as the sloth slowly began to climb the tree. A female, she was so close I could hear her claws digging in as she scaled the tree’s vertical trunk. The first thing that struck me was how quickly she reached the top.
Despite her apparently slow pace, which seemed almost dream-like as she hauled first an arm, then a leg, and so on up the tree trunk, it didn’t take her long to get there. Sloths have less muscle mass than animals of a similar size, and yet their grip is double the strength of a human’s which makes them extremely good at climbing. She made the 15-metre climb look easy. Watching how she moved, the speed she moved it, her relaxed reaction to my presence and the heights involved, set my mind whirring about the challenges of recording a video sequence.
The next day, I spotted a baby sloth, tucked into its mother’s chest right outside my cabana. Brown-throated sloths’ mate between January and March, and after a six-month gestation, females give birth to a single offspring. The mothers care for them until they reach independence, at about six-months old. This one was only about a month old and was not much bigger than my hand.
I set up the DJI RS3 Pro and transmission kit with my Sony A7S which allowed us to operate the camera from a safe distance so as not to get in the way of the mother and baby, while ensuring that the angle, view and settings could be adapted as needed.
I watched fascinated as it slowly moved away from its mum and hung independently from a branch. Baby sloths are born with tremendous grip and use their long, curved claws to cling to branches or to their mother’s fur. After a short adventure, it returned to its mother and began to suckle. I was delighted, this has not been filmed much in the wild before. These intimate shots were taken using the DJI Pocket 2 on an extendable pole. Baby sloths suckle small drops of milk throughout the day since the mothers need to keep their weight down so that they can climb more efficiently and so don’t store milk.
The 4K capability meant that I was able to get really tight shots of this unique moment and the gimbal allowed me to be mobile and film right through the foliage with a steady shot.
While the female and pup rested, I spotted a male coming down the tree here as well. It was a great place to set up my Sony camera on the RS3 Pro Gimbal and mounted it on a tripod at the base of the tree.
The sloth came down the tree and rested right in front of the camera. The transmission kit allowed me to control everything from 10 metres away so the sloth was unaware that it was being filming, resulting in stunning footage. The image quality on this monitor is absolutely outstanding I am able to see every detail which enabled me to get the shot exactly right.
Soon, the female sloth started to move with her baby and the RS3 Pro gimbal was the perfect tool to follow the action and get the perfect panning movement with the camera. It was just extraordinary being this close to her she moved slowly through the branches, without getting in her way.
Filming Sloths with DJI Equipment Full Video
As the sloth climbed higher up on the branches the DJI pocket came into its own too. I put it up into the canopy and carried on recording the sequence in close 4K detail.
As she climbed with her pup higher to feed, we deployed the Mavic 3 drone which enabled us to get panoramic views of the sloth climbing high into the cecropia tree with the incredible Caribbean Island backdrop.
I was pleased with the results of filming sloths with my DJI kit. I managed to capture unusual behaviour of a mother suckling in detail and able to follow her through the dense rainforest, up into the canopy and high up on a cecropia tree. The sequence achieved with the DJI line up of equipment was simply stunning.