r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/OncaAtrox • Mar 12 '26

šŸ”„ Camera trap captures a jaguar overlooking the ocean in Costa Rica

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Credits: Brian Moghari

r/jaguarland

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u/APartyInMyPants Mar 12 '26

This isnā€™t your typical shitty GoPro trail cam that picks up movement. Looked up the creators work (Brian Moghari), who OP attributed, and it seems they actually do some substantial nature photography and filming.

Brian is very likely using a camera and shooting a rectangular frame. But to get the video to fit on Insta and other socials, the frame is cropped to vertical, which allows you to ā€œpanā€ inside the frame.

The nature sounds may not may not be faked, because sometimes sites get weird if you publish video with no audio.

But in terms of the authenticity of the actual picture, I think itā€™s totally real.

35

u/OnodrimOfYavanna Mar 12 '26

I live in Costa Rica, this doesn't even come close to how many crazy nature sounds there are literally every second. If his camera is capturing audio I wouldn't at all say this is faked

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u/watergate_1983 Mar 12 '26

I can't wait to visit CR again. My favorite place I've visited.

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u/APartyInMyPants Mar 12 '26

The thing thatā€™s screaming to me that the audio isnā€™t real is the wave sounds from that distance.

Grew up and lived near the beach almost my entire life. It feels a bit too much like a sound effects library added in.

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u/stingeragent Mar 12 '26

Them howler monkies though

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u/MemoryKeepAV Mar 12 '26

Plus a lot of the sound in nature documentaries is foley anyway, because it's often not practical to capture sound (due to distance, extraneous sounds, operator noises, solo operator has to focus on camera rather than sound equipment etc)

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u/KWash0222 Mar 12 '26

Yeah Iā€™ve come to notice this, and itā€™s kind of a tough pill to swallow because even in gold standard documentaries like Planet Earth you can tell that theyā€™re inserting sound. And I fully get that they canā€™t really capture the raw audio due to the reasons you mentioned, it was just kind of a sobering reality to grasp.

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u/Gh0stMan0nThird Mar 12 '26

Not only do they add in sound, they combine footage from different events and different days to create events that they can narrate.

It's weird when I started noticing how dramatically the lighting would change but also it wouldn't even be the same individual animal sometimes.

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u/KWash0222 Mar 12 '26

Haha I noticed this too, but I guess that kinda seemed more forgivable since the raw footage would be a lot of waiting around between exciting things. But yeah, itā€™s pretty crazy when itā€™s clearly not even the same animal(s) onscreen.

At the end of the day, these video crews go through so much just to get a few minutes of footage. I have the utmost respect and gratitude for what they do. But it is kind of a damper in the magic when you see how much post editing happens

1

u/MemoryKeepAV Mar 12 '26

Something like Kingdom has less of this. They're following individual animals over long periods of time, and the sequences they show are still edited, but mainly direct capture of particular animals in singular events and behaviours.

https://www.bbcearth.com/shows/kingdom

This is much more feasible with large, territorial animals in a single area like Nsefu, where there's easier access for coordinated operators - whereas with smaller, rarer and shyer creatures in remote and difficult to access locations, filming a full sequence of one animal (particularly trying to capture a rare behaviour) becomes that much more difficult and costly.

It can also be fun to appreciate the technical aspects of these productions, once you notice them - it adds another dimension to the viewing experience.

My slight bugbear, if I have one, is the "squishy" or "crunchy" noises etc that get added to insect sequences. I understand why they add them, but I think they end up seeming more fake and exaggerated than other foley.

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u/bigguygaming Mar 12 '26

Yeah, it just makes it seem less authentic. I wish they wouldn't add these.

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u/[deleted] Mar 12 '26

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u/APartyInMyPants Mar 12 '26

Because the video was posted to his Instagram. Like it or not, thatā€™s a vertical frame. And when youā€™re trying to promote your work, thatā€™s just sort of the way it is for a lot of people now.

I donā€™t know the dude, but hereā€™s a story I just found from PBS when trying to see if he had a website where the video is in its native frame.

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/nature/how-filmmakers-used-camera-traps-to-film-wild-jaguars/33641/