What makes a good wildlife photographer

Instead, challenge yourself to shoot wider. Give the viewer a better idea of where you took the image and where your subject lives.

This is applicable to any species you photograph, from a squirrel to a deer to an elephant. The elephant below was photographed with a wide-angle lens, and the resulting image gives you a sense of the environment and makes the most of the clouds and the sky:. And I mean way closer. Get in-your-face close by changing your position or using a longer lens with an optional teleconverter. Try to create unique, interesting studies of the animals and birds you photograph.

This will also help you think in terms of more abstract compositions. If you have a good view of more than one member of a species, stay a while! Make sure to capture the interaction between your subjects, if possible. Be ready to photograph the subjects fighting, preening one another, mating, or just having a good time. Really, pretty much any action between two animals will lead to a great photo. Look at the images below. First up: a solitary African spoonbill, minding its own business on a perch, happy as can be.

This is a major wildlife photo tip, and one that every beginner wildlife photographer should commit to memory. You see, in wildlife photography, you must pay careful attention to your point of view.

Do you shoot from up high? Do you shoot from a standing height? Do you shoot from flat against the ground? Each option will provide you with a completely different result, some of which will be much more impactful than others. Shoot from an eye-level perspective or go even lower if you can.

This brings the viewer of your image right into the scene. It adds intimacy. Build a professional photographic portfolio whilst exploring wild Africa. With any creature, body language is a key indicator of emotion, with the eyes the most important indicator. They are a captivating part of all animals and by ensuring that the eyes are the main focal point in your photograph, it can make the shot extremely powerful. Therefore, it is essential that they are super sharp and in focus, you can enhance the colour and pop the eyes out when you are post-processing.

When in the field, play around with using flash to pop out the eyes, particularly in low-light conditions. There are a few options for capturing motion in your shots. These are either freezing the action or creating motion blur.

Part of the art of wildlife photography is telling the story behind the animal and giving it a sense of place. Often done by landscape photographers, it is entirely acceptable to improve the scene in your shot by removing unwanted litter.

You can do this either through physically moving the unsightly object out of your shot or by getting into a position or angle which excludes it from your frame and by setting your aperture to around F5. There are many things you can change in post-processing such as white balance, colour temperature, hue and to an extent noise. However, certain aspects of your photo cannot be altered. The following points are things that have to be shot correctly in the field otherwise your photo will be useless.

Unfortunately unless you are a photoshop genius it is difficult to add on parts of an animal during post-processing. Therefore, when you are out in the field avoid unintentionally cutting off parts of the animal, as this creates a disjointed picture and by cutting of the tail tip, side of an ear etc.

Thanks for the article. I would like to know more about point 9. Take time to research subject matter. What resources do you personally use and what kinds of information should you be looking for? About point 1 — what equipment do you recommend — what camera or type , what lenses or types? Thanks for the good info.

Thanks Carlos, however, I personally do not think sending photos to a competition is a golden rule of wildlife photography. Interesting you should think that it is. Carlos, please be cognizant that females are also wildlife photographers. You have a few things that you can utilize for wildlife, raw, iso. Gear one for close and one for longer distance subjects. Thousands are doing wildlife photography and have been in the field for longer than a decade.

They compete and the competition is educated and of a very high standard. You need to enter your work, not just for exposure but also as a measure that is going to give you guidance in this challenging field. Gear and glass is not going to present the images on their own!

Do you research and educate yourself. Useful tips for wildlife photographers. Simon Stafford won the Mammals category. His shot, The aftermath, depicts the darker side of one of wildlife's greatest spectacles, the wildebeest migration of Kenya's Maasai Mara.

Returning at first light to the site of a stampede, Simon knew that scavenging hyenas would be making the most of the grisly scene he had witnessed the day before. You need to know your subject or you won't be able to anticipate behaviour,' says Simon. They may have adapted to local conditions and so on.

So the more you can observe behaviour the better you can anticipate what might happen. Wildlife photographers can go to great lengths to achieve a prize-winning shot. Some will wait for weeks in below-freezing temperatures or return to locations over the course of a lifetime to capture rare or fleeting phenomena. Ganesh H Shankar's image of rose-ringed parakeets attempting to remove a monitor lizard from their nest won the Birds category.

While Ganesh was lucky enough to stumble upon this moment, capturing the perfect shot took several days of watching and waiting. I normally roam around the park, but I stopped walking. I decided to focus on these animals until I got the perfect picture,' Ganesh says. Four-time finalist Klaus Tamm aims for good composition and mood when photographing his tiny botanical subjects. But even with an "average" plant like a clover, one can create good images. This photo earned him a place among the Invertebrates finalists.

Imre describes his approach as highly experimental. The life of mayflies is short and their swarming dates are unpredictable,' he says. Working to capture such an ephemeral moment in low light, he experimented with lighting and took plenty of pictures. They were all around me - it was a fantastic feeling. Their wings rustle and whir very loudly at the peak of the swarm. I took hundreds of pictures, but the composition was correct in only one or two.

Nature may sometimes seem cruel but it is in these moments that the photographer can often find beauty and compelling stories. Scenes of predators or struggle are a common subject for wildlife photographers.