Wildlife Photography
KNOW YOUR GEAR
This sounds like the biggest cliché! But it’s true. The great moments in wildlife photography last on average between 5 and 20 seconds. If you are not familiar with the settings of your camera, you WILL either miss it or blow the images you do manage to capture.
HOW LOW CAN YOU GO???
The point-of-view of a wildlife photograph is just about everything. How you portray your subject can make all the difference in the world. In short – try to get an eye-level perspective. This brings the viewer of your image right into the scene and confronts them with the view of the world from your subject’s
PATIENCE ISN’T A VIRTUE…IT’S A NECESSITY
Things in nature are unpredictable. Anything can happen at any time. It is therefore imperative that you become patient…very patient. I catch myself out frequently enough being very impatient. Essentially, it’s almost a culmination of many of the things we’ve discussed so far. Observing your subjects, getting to know their behavioural patterns, requires a great deal of patience
BE THERE & ENJOY IT
By this I don’t just mean you need to physically show up and you need to be at the right place at the right time – of course, that applies – but I actually mean you need to be in the moment and don’t get caught up so much with the technical issues and your settings that you don’t take in the moments you are witnessing while out photographing animals and wildlife.
We need to be mindful of the privilege of spending time in nature and being in places where the hand of man hasn’t quite exerted its full force yet. Maybe for you it’s just the most isolated spot in your local park where you can sit and observe and photograph squirrels and birds, maybe it’s facing a wild Kodiak bear on the Alaskan floodplains or capturing the behaviours of the macaques at Trentham. Regardless, enjoy what you are doing! Have fun doing it! What does it help us to spend so much time on this amazing hobby-cum-art form if we are not enjoying the time spent?