Once you have snapped your family, pets and garden critters it’s common to want to graduate to the planets more unusual furry inhabitants. Here are some tips to get the best wildlife photography results.
My Dad is one of those people who not only knows the correct name of every creature he sees but can often get up close to them. He barely needs his binoculars. The rest of us are not so fortunate so need telephoto lenses and a lot of luck.
The trick with wildlife is more about getting close (safely) and observing, along with a little luck. Rather than technical or equipment concerns it is often how stealthily you can move that makes the difference..
Get your settings right before the animal does something interesting, fire off some test shots. You don’t want to be messing around with exposures and ISOs when the scene before you changes from second to second.
Time of day is a tricky, often the rule is early for nice diffused lighting or later to get golden hour light … but wildlife doesn’t always follow the same camera tip blogs as we do, they keep their own schedule! You need to know what time they tend to appear.
Knowing animal behavior … or pure luck gets the best shots. Either do your homework or make up for your ignorance with very big, fast memory cards. I do the latter.
Be quiet and patient. Find a good comfortable spot, use a tripod if you have one and can be somewhere the animals frequent often.
Fire off loads of shots and keep shooting. You can edit out the rubbish later.
Careful where you stand and walk; when your focus is on a twitchy animal you might not remember to be careful where you are putting your feet. It is so easy to hurt yourself or break a piece of equipment so be safe and keep aware of the immediate landscape as well as the beautiful vista you are trying to capture.
Wildlife Composition
Wildlife subjects can be treated as portraits or action. Beauty or an emphasis on movement and drama.
My preference for the portrait style is for the animal to be big in the picture while keeping some habitat context. It is really cool if you can get a crisp shot focusing on the eyes.
Getting some interaction between mothers and young is always guaranteed to melt hearts.
For action it is great to get them running, flying or on those rare occasions where you are lottery-winning-lucky, hunting.
Don’t worry if you are disappointed with your first few attempts, I am sure it takes a lot of practice for some of us. Personally I get so excited at seeing some wildlife my composition usually suffers, personally I try to improve what I do get through cropping.
Wildlife Photography Equipment
If you have a choice of lenses then I would go for something with a good range but an excellent magnification on the top end. IS/VR is also handy if you have to walk around.
My 70-300mm has worked well for me, it isn’t too heavy, 300mm with a 1.6x crop factor is not a bad length and it has IS. Damian on the other hand with his 500mm “bigma” can get shots that are just impossible for me when he has something to steady himself with, tripod, monopod or my head.
Out in the wilds it might be worthwhile investing in equipment with weather sealing or failing that all weather covers. Can make your kit look daft but I would rather look a git and still have working equipment. If you don’t have either then tuck your stuff away securely when not in use.
Summary
Best tip of all, and the one most likely to improve your results? Ask people who have grabbed great shots in the area. They might give you some great local knowledge, photography tips, and invaluable nuggets like where to stand and at what time of day.
The experts take years to get the shots they do. They also spend a lot of time to get the one or two shots that appear in national geographic. For the rest of us it is best to just relax, enjoy the experience, do our best and hope we get something useful.
One Comment
That’s a nice piece of information, there are some very useful things for any amateur. I just want to add that if you want to get some nice wildlife shots, you should be ready for unexpectedness. You never know where you’ll find yourself in your search for an unusual image, that’s why I prefer to put on comfortable clothes and boots.
Agree, it is important to know your subject, but usually I just go hiking and shoot every living thing I meet, that’s why I prefer to shoot in the morning, when lighting is good and most animals are active. But if your aim is an owl, surely you’d better start at night.
When shooting wildlife, there is one more thing to consider – season. There is not much to photograph at winter, but spring and summer are the best time for wildlife photography.