Creating a great photo is hard enough, but when your subject happens to be on four legs or flying it can go from fun to frustrating, fast.
Two things to consider when snapping shots of your favorite specimen: your equipment and your approach. ArtsChateau has a great Top 10 list of things to do to help make your pictures worthy of National Geographic (or at least the refrigerator door).
What editing tools should an outdoor photography buff use? Adobe’s got a great one called Lightroom. Rob Sheppard over at Outdoorphotographer.com gives a detailed report here.
While we’re on the subject of creature photography, there’s a great article from Digital Photography School. Written by wildlife photographer and author Joe McDonald, it calls out some “rules of the road” for taking pictures of wild animals in their natural habitat. It’s sad to think someone would ever disrupt a bird nest or fox den just to get a picture, but this can be a real problem. Some places have strict procedures photogs must follow.
I’m far from being an accomplished wildlife photographer. However, on a recent trip to the fabled YO Ranch I did manage to maneuver close enough to this magnificent buck to get a decent late-afternoon image. The last couple of hours of daylight can yield interesting results. I used a kit zoom lens (55-200mm) on my Nikon D40 (could’ve/should’ve borrowed a friend’s 400mm) and edited using Picasa. Can you spot the doe under the buck’s right ear?
May 12th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Nice camera, I have the D40x and love it. I really need to make an account on flicker or somewhere for some of my shots from Alaska when I used a Fuji E900. My main problem with my Nikon is night shots. My Fuji took great night shots and mostly without ever using a flash while the Nokon always wants to use the flash or changes my shutter speed. I have some great shots of a friend’s daughter racing on her 4 wheeler but when it got dark my camera was useless. Even with the overhead lights on it wouldn’t give me a good shot without using the flash and I didn’t want to blind the kids who were racing so I put it away.
Anyway as for wildlife shots I snuck up on a hare in Danali National park and took a picture. Unfortunately my son decided to chase it away after that. My tip for wildlifeshots: leave your 7 year old at home.
May 12th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
@jervis961 Sage advice, indeed!