Final Thoughts
Nature photography is full of memorable moments. Thanks to Rick Rasmussen who guided us to this private prairie chicken dancing ground, we got to photograph these fabulous birds. Their calls made us wonder what the early pioneers thought when they heard these “boomers” for the first time.
Nature photographers’ love being outside. Spending time finding a gorgeous wildflower or observing the mating dance of a prairie chicken is ample reward in itself. Many of us use nature photography as an escape from everyday life. Pursuing natural subjects to photograph gives us the incentive to get out of bed before dawn and drive to wild areas. We know many people who have become world travelers in their pursuit of photographing nature.
In addition to spending lots of time in wild places, many of us are attracted to the process of taking photographs. Most nature photographers love working their cameras and lenses to get the best images. Every newly introduced piece of photographic gear is carefully studied to see if it offers advantages over equipment that is already owned. The rapid advances in digital photography have kept scores of nature photographers happy and sometimes unhappy at the same time. We are excited to see the introduction of new equipment that makes shooting high-quality images easier. On the other hand, buying all this exciting new equipment is financially challenging for most of us.
Spending quality time in natural areas and perfecting the art and science of shooting nature images with fancy new equipment is rewarding in itself. But, the act of shooting images is not enough for many of us. Eventually, you may feel the urge to do something with your images. Everyone I know shares their images in some way. No particular way is right for everyone so let’s look at some of the ways to share the images you have put so much time and money into producing.
Since the beginning of photography, prints have been the primary way images are shared with a mass audience. Photographers love having prints of their favorite images adorn their walls at home. Not only do prints that are tastefully matted and framed make beautiful wall decor, but this is a wonderful way to share them with visitors.
Prints make wonderful gifts too. Always consider giving prints of your best images to friends and family members at Christmas or on birthdays. Since a print is so personal, they are usually more cherished than anything you could buy at the store that is mass produced.
PROTECT SPECIAL PLACES
Perhaps a special place such as a pond near your home is threatened by development. Many photographers have used their images to protect these places so everyone can enjoy it now and in the future. A collection of prints depicting a special natural area might help sway the powers that be to protect it. Many wonderful places have been saved from being “improved” upon with the help of photographers. Indeed, Yellowstone National Park, the world’s first, was protected in part with the help of early photographers. They photographed its incredible natural wonders and shared these images with important people who eventually saved Yellowstone for its scenic natural wonders.
EARN MONEY
It is possible to sell photographic prints at art shows and galleries. Quite a few professional nature photographers earn their living selling images in this way. While it is true that most nature photographers aren’t getting rich, it still is an excellent way to earn a living.
GETTING PRINTS MADE
Making prints can be expensive or inexpensive, difficult or easy, depending on you. If you want only the finest quality prints that technology can produce, expect to pay a premium. If price is a consideration, then less expensive ways are available with little loss of quality. It is amazing how cheaply quality prints can be made by companies that specialize in digital print-making. Even Costco does a great job very inexpensively. Many excellent printmaking companies such as www.mpix.com will take care of your needs over the Internet.
Like most photographers, we love seeing new equipment become available. Barbara used her new (at the time) Nikon 200–400 mm zoom lens to catch this killdeer brooding its eggs in the rain. These birds nest in the grass strip of our long dirt driveway every year.
If you prefer more control over your prints, then consider setting up a home digital darkroom. We use the latest version of PhotoShop to adjust our images and print them out in our office with Epson printers and ink. Doing it yourself does require a good deal of equipment and software, plus you must learn a lot about color management and imaging software. While it does take some effort and expense, making your own prints is fun and exciting!
PROJECTING DIGITAL IMAGES
The quality of digital projection is rapidly increasing while the cost of projectors is coming down. It is now possible to buy a good digital projector for $1000 or less. Using software such as ProShow Gold, it is easy to put together fine digital slide shows complete with wonderful dissolves and music too.
I know several incredibly good nature photographers who make digital nature photography programs using simple software to produce outstanding nature shows set to music. These shows are wonderful to behold. Digital shows should have a theme such as wildflowers, seasons, or wildlife. These programs are of great interest to nature centers, camera clubs, retirement homes, and public service groups. Presenting a well-done program is rewarding to the audience and to yourself. Digital shows is a wonderful way to share your images with a mass audience. Some presenters charge a small fee to cover their expenses. If you like creating programs and enjoy public speaking, presenting digital programs is the perfect match for your talent and desires.
A digital slide show should have a theme, rather than random images. A theme could be baby animals like this whitetail fawn, Kenya wildlife, Antarctica, or wildflowers around your home.
Many people have their own web site or share their images by posting them on web sites that are designed for this purpose. Two web sites that permit you to post images include www.photo.net and www.naturephotographers.net. Perhaps your Internet service provider such as AOL offers a place to share images too.
GETTING PUBLISHED
One of the crowning achievements of any nature photographer is seeing their photos published in books, magazines, and calendars. Anyone would be thrilled to see one of their photos used on the front cover of a magazine, in the pages of a book, or showcased in a calendar. While you might think that getting published is difficult, I can tell you that it is not. Producers of these paper products need many thousands of images every year and you might very well have the images they want to buy.
Selling images successfully does require having super high-quality images of subjects that buyers want. Your images must be sharp, perfectly exposed, well lighted, and interesting to the client.
TEACH PHOTOGRAPHY
This is an excellent way to share your photographic knowledge and photos. While my favorite part of nature photography is spending time in wild places taking photographs, my second love is teaching others how to effectively photograph nature. I enjoy teaching photography more than seeing my photos published in books, magazines, and calendars. I love teaching photographic field workshops and leading exotic photo tours around the world. It is exciting to carefully guide a group of students to a special place when the weather conditions are perfect so they can make their own exquisite nature photographs. My success is realized through their success!
You could begin your photographic teaching career by offering a course on digital nature photography through a community enrichment program or perhaps at the local nature center. If you find you enjoy teaching, then you might begin teaching field programs further away from home. This is the exact route I took that evolved into a full-time career which has taken me everywhere from the Arctic Circle to Antarctica and more than 25 times to East Africa.
FINDING YOUR DIGITAL IMAGES
No matter how you want to share your images, you must find them first. Most photographers store images on the computer hard drive or preferably on a huge external storage device. You could use the software that comes with your camera to do this or buy an independent program.
We organize our digital images so we can find them easily, but not spend too much time at it. All of the images we shoot in the field are written to a SanDisk 4 GB CF card. We use a SanDisk card reader that is attached to our computer and use a software program called PhotoMechanic that handles RAW images quickly. Using the ingest control in PhotoMechanic, we download all images on the CF card to a folder called New Captures that is on our 120 GB external hard drive. We go through all of the images, deleting any that we don’t want to keep. Each different subject is selected as a group and a title is applied to each digital file along with a unique number.
Recently, we have been photographing the red fox that lives nearby and has lost its fear of us. That means Foxy (Barbara named it) comes when called and eats out of our hand without biting the hand that feeds it. Out of 220 RAW images, we might keep only 40, the others being deleted because the fox moved, the image wasn’t sharp, the fox blinked, or the pose was poor. The remaining 40 images are labeled, numbered, and moved from the New Captures folder to the red fox folder. Our folder organization is simple, but effective. We have a folder for all mammals in the US. Each species we have images of has its own sub-folder under the US Mammals folder. We have other main folders for wildflowers, reptiles, amphibians, Yellowstone National Park, birds, Kenya, and many other subject groups. If we need a cheetah image, all that is required is to go to the Kenya folder, open up the mammal folder under Kenya, and select the cheetah folder. It takes about 5 seconds to get to all of the cheetah images.
Teaching nature photography is a fun way to earn money for your hobby. Most teachers start locally, but it can lead to other things. Our early classes soon provided the opportunity to lead dozens of photo safaris to remote corners of the world including the best game parks in Kenya where these common zebras entertained us.
Everything on our tiny ranch is totally protected. Many wild animals learn you won’t harm them making them easy to photograph. This red fox has shared our property for 3 years so far. She comes when we call her name.
Keep your image filing system tight and simple. Keep only the best images so edit ruthlessly. Keep the folders logical. To find this bald eagle image, all we have to do is go to the bird folder and look for the bald eagle folder. We could find this image in less than 1 minute.
There are plenty of software programs that can organize images far more precisely by using key words. But, all of these programs seem to be labor intensive to us so we resist using them. We would rather spend more time outdoors photographing than more time in the office imputing key words and other data that seems useless to us. Everyone will find their own answer to how they want to store and organize their growing collection of digital images. We find that simple and quick is the best way for us.
