One way to spend time in nature is by taking pictures of wildlife. Taking pictures of animals is difficult as they can’t take your commands and won’t sit still for you. Therefore, you need certain equipment and strategies to be a good wildlife photographer. Let’s see some tips for getting high-quality photos of wildlife.
How to Tackle Moving Animals
Animals cannot stay still. For this, you need a good shutter speed. Shutter speeds can be very handy when dealing with wildlife that is easily spooked by movements or tends to move around a lot.
Benefits of a Rapid Shutter
A rapid shutter will control the speed of the animals that are not still. You can capture still pictures if you set the shutter speed to 1/500 or even more.
What Does the Speed of the Shutter Depend Upon
The shutter speed depends on the subject. Is the animal running? If yes, you will have to alter the shutter rate by increasing it. But if the animal is still or just walking slowly, you don’t need a rapid speed. A speed of 1/100 would be fine.
Sports Mode: If your camera doesn’t have the specifications of altering shutter speed, you can use the sports mode to get the same effect.
Aperture Mode: Wildlife photographers prefer setting their cameras to the Aperture Mode. By this, the camera will do the job for you by managing the speed of the shutter.
Benefits of Aperture Priority Mode
Shutter mode can sometimes capture too many exposed images causing your pictures not to have a natural effect. However, when you use the mode of aperture priority, the camera will choose the shutter’s speed according to the exposure. It will also deliver the correct exposure by reducing the shutter speed.
Lens Size
Your picture quality highly depends on the size of the lens you own. It can either be a big lens or a zoom one depending on your preference and what you need to achieve out of your photography.
A Big Lens: If you own a big camera lens, you can capture pictures from a distance, but the results will seem like you captured the picture from very close.
Preferred Lens Size: If you are an animal photographer, you will need a lens with a focal length of 300mm.
A Zoom Lens: A Zoom lens allows you to adjust the focal length. While taking pictures of animals that are far away from you, you can quickly spot another animal at a greater distance and zoom in or out to have the perfect capture without even moving.
How to Prevent Blurry Images
Blurry images are caused by an unstable camera lens, ground, or shaky hands. Turn on the image stabilization mode to prevent blurs. However, turn off the stabilization mode if you are using a tripod.
Background of the Image
Photo by George Lebada/Pexels
A good background will always give life to your wildlife photography. So, always think ahead before making any shots since a background can easily determine how your photo will look.
A Clean Background: It will not matter how focused your pictures are; the picture might not stand out if the background is not free of other objects intervening. Other objects should not dim the animal you want to focus on.
How to Make Good Backgrounds
Reduce the focus on your background. You can also move away from the background and closer to the subject to get a clear background. You can capture pictures at f/4 to get a good blurry background.
The background should not be very different from where the animal is usually found. For example, you can capture a deer eating in a deer feeder. Your background should be a forest, woods, and bushes so that it can relate to the wildlife animals.
Orientation of the Light
The direction of the light can greatly impact the quality of your captured images and here’s how:
Blacklight: A black effect is produced when the sun’s light falls on the back of the animal. Such images are captured to give the effect of a light rim around the animal.
Sun Facing Your Back:
Photographers who take pictures with the sun behind them use Axial Lighting, and this type of lighting generates good photographs with an illuminating effect.
Sideways Light: You get sideways light images when the light is on the left or right side of the animal. This gives a dual effect as one side of the animal will be dim while the other will be in the light.
Conclusion
To snap attractive pictures of wildlife, you need to develop an understanding of photography. You should have photography skills, but the tips mentioned above are important in finalizing perfect wildlife pictures. Once you know the basics, you will certainly be able to take wonderful pictures.
Check out: 10 Reasons Why Travelling Is Good for You
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