Introduction
This book will help you select excellent camera equipment and teach you how to use it efficiently to capture superb wildlife images easily and consistently. We emphasize photographic techniques that are simple, precise, fast, and produce high-quality images.
Thirty-five years of active full-immersion nature photography teaching have allowed us to help improve the photography of more than 60,000 clients in person. They’ve attended our one-day seminars, week-long workshops, overseas wildlife photo tours, and they’ve read our books and watched our videos. Many have repeated workshops and seminars. We’ve been able to helpfully pinpoint areas of weak technique in many students, and we’ve enlightened many more who were still encumbered by outdated film shooting methods. Moreover, far too many digital camera users come to us unaware of the still largely unknown, but digitally helpful techniques of back-button focusing, manual metering, Shutter-priority with Auto ISO, main flash, fill-flash, multiple flash, the all-important RGB histogram, and precision focusing techniques.
We always ask workshop and seminar audiences whether we should be politically correct and gentle with our opinions on equipment, techniques, and images, or whether they want hard-hitting honesty. Honesty, though, often results in our stating facts or opinions contrary to the thinking of the student. Honesty may conflict the student who thought otherwise on a matter, or in some cases even offend that student. As but a few examples, we rarely use carrying straps on cameras and lenses. They’re always in the way, hang up on things, and slow us down. We don’t use filters solely for the protection of lenses, as filters reduce important image sharpness and in many lighting conditions, cause or worsen objectionable flare. We use filters only to obtain a specific photographic effect. Yet our lenses continue to survive years of professional use without damage. We primarily use manual metering for arriving at the optimum exposure, though sometimes use Shutter-priority and employ Auto ISO when the light dims. We know the vast majority of amateur and pro photographers favor Aperture-priority, though we don’t understand why when you consider all of the problems its use creates. We can’t survey all readers before writing a book though, so we’ll assume that readers prefer just what workshop and seminar students prefer, that is, the most honest approach we can bring to a subject. We’ll explain why we do what we do, and we’ll guide you toward successful photographic techniques that will serve you well in your goal of capturing fine images.
We’re highly experienced photographic educators, but we’re also full-time working nature photographers. From both perspectives, we’re very passionate about landscape images, macro work, wildlife photography, and yes, outdoor photography in general. Wildlife photography is always our favorite though, and that’s easily explained by Barbara having grown up surrounded by wild and domestic animals on an Ohio farm, and John being a professional wildlife biologist before becoming widely known as a nature photographer and teacher.
Like many, we learned wildlife photography with film cameras, but we’ve substantially modified our techniques after switching to digital photography in 2003. We’ve come to appreciate the high ISO choices, the crop factors of some cameras, the efficiency of back-button focusing, using the RGB histogram to guarantee excellent exposure, the fast shooting speeds available for fast-moving mammals and birds, the convenience of high capacity memory cards, the very sophisticated integrated flash systems, and the usefulness of live-view operations. We’ve included all of these tactics, and many more, in this book.
Every image in this book is a digital capture. There are no digitized film images. This decision causes a small problem. We’ve led more than 60 wildlife photo tours around this world, including trips to Antarctica, the Falkland Islands, and the Galapagos. The problem is that we haven’t visited some of these locations since switching to digital photography, so there are no images from some countries included in the book. Luckily, we have extensive image files from several trips to Rwanda and our many trips to the wildlife-rich game parks of Kenya. We’ve also included wildlife images from a wintery northern Japan, hummingbird images from Ecuador and British Columbia, and a 2011 trip to the Galapagos.
Regardless of the source of illustrative images, the focus of this book (pun intended) is to show you to systematically optimize your camera equipment and technique for capturing excellent wildlife images. There’s plenty to cover. You’ll learn how to exploit your camera’s many menu choices and custom functions as we ourselves do in capturing exciting wildlife images. We also use a “shooting workflow” that has worked wonderfully for us and for thousands of our students. That workflow is meticulously covered in the book.
We’ll be as specific as we can in how to employ our methods. Again we encounter a problem. A lens or camera that we discuss with specificity might be obsolete by the time you read about it. So we must be general.
Hopefully you can apply the ideas to its successor. Some techniques, such as the back-button focusing (some call it thumb focusing) we so heartily endorse, must be set on the specific camera, but cameras differ from model to model. Trying to describe exactly how to do it on every camera in the marketplace would be practically impossible, and would surely put the most eager reader into deep slumber. In such cases we’ll explain what we do, why we do it, how we do it, and suggest that you study your own camera manual to learn the details.
The modern “digital darkroom” that lets computer technology replace hot, wet, and smelly chemical darkrooms, is critically important to digital photographs generally and certainly to wildlife photography. As but one example, all images generated by a digital sensor must be sharpened. Sharpening
American robins are abundant at our home. I lay on the ground to obtain this low shooting viewpoint and used back-button focusing to sharply focus its face. Canon EOS-7D, 500mm f/4 lens , f/5 at 1/250 second, ISO 500, Shutter-priority with +1/3-stop exposure compensation.
can be done in the camera in some cases, but generally, all images should be subjected to post-capture sharpening. Many images can or should be adjusted in exposure, contrast, color, and even composition.
Digital file management and digital post-capture editing though, are thoroughly covered in many excellent and widely available books, so we’ve decided to leave them out of this book. Space is severely limited, even in a book, and we want to devote all available space here to the carefully pinpointed subject of wildlife photography. This means I must reluctantly leave some topics out, and not develop others as much as I would like. This forces me to pick and choose which topics will be helpful to most photographers. Some chapters such as the ones on exposure, focusing, composition, and flash could easily be an entire book in themselves. Indeed, the art of hummingbird photography (a specialty of ours) could be its own book, but I fear the market for it is too small to make it financially feasible.
Nothing will aid your wildlife photography more than your own knowledge of the wildlife. Its appearance, its anatomy, its eating and sleeping habits, its mating habits, and in general, anything you can learn can be important. Consider attending appropriate classes at a local college, nature center, or a national park. Read books, magazines, and field guides about wildlife.
Explore the internet. Spend as much time as you can observing wildlife. All knowledge you gain is invaluable in finding the wildlife, in learning weather conditions that foster good availability of the wildlife, in finding optimum shooting locations, in foreseeing proper camera gear setup, and in learning to anticipate the animal’s movements so you can very gently push your shutter button at the optimum “peak of the action.”
It’s critical that you never harass, or stress, wildlife! Critical! What is harassment? Simply, you’re too close if your presence causes an animal to change what it’s doing. Always watch an animal’s reaction to you, and never disrupt its natural behavior. Not only critical to the wildlife’s well-being, wildlife harassment is critical to the public, critical to the community of wildlife photographers, and can even be critical to you. We’ve all read of the perils of photographing Mama Moose and Mrs. Grizzly, and I even know a careless wildlife photographer who had to hastily abandon camera and tripod to escape an irritated 8-foot alligator!
To continue on that important topic, you should learn any special wildlife viewing rules at your location and stay aware of other wildlife viewers. Flushing a rare harlequin duck for a better shot, while a bunch of bird watchers is viewing it, can result in a rapid outburst of very harsh language. Don’t disturb an animal by trying to attract its attention. Be patient and you’ll have ample opportunity to photograph its natural behavior. We heard of one unthinking photographer ticketed by a park ranger for throwing a stone into a river to force a feeding moose to raise its head. The moose raised its head anyway long before the ranger finished writing the ticket, and caused Mr. Impatient Shooter to miss his shot!
Feeding can be quite effective in attracting wildlife within easy camera range. However, the feeding of wildlife is illegal in many parks and preserves. Also, some larger predators like bears, mountain lions, and coyotes, should never be fed.
Alaskan brown bears are superb at catching salmon in their natural environment. Large predators must never be fed because they quickly learn to associate humans with food, creating a dangerous situation for both. Nikon D300, Nikon 200–400mm f/4 lens at 390mm, f/9 at 1/1000 second, ISO 800 and aperturepriority with a minus 1/3-stop exposure compensation.
Feeding teaches those unfortunate animals to associate food with humans. The animals invariably become dangerous to people and must be killed. We live in bear country and know well that a fed bear becomes a dead bear. Such warnings notwithstanding, many fine images of small birds and small mammals like chipmunks and squirrels are made at seed feeders. However, feeders placed too close to windows pose a hazard because birds sometimes fly headlong into the glass, thus injuring or killing the bird. And, it’s not too hard to foresee that a larger bird could break the glass and cause unforeseeable mayhem. Also note that feeders must be kept scrupulously clean to help prevent bird-to-bird transmission of disease.
Photography of birds at the nest has been very popular, but raising young is stressful for all wildlife. Fortunately, the advent of higher ISO speeds and very long lenses have made the photography of nesting birds far less hazardous than it once was. Contrary to those who uphold that no birds should be photographed at the nest, there are times and conditions where it’s easily done without endangering the birds. Birds
Northern flickers nest in aspen tree cavities next to our Idaho home. This handsome male flicker was accustomed to seeing us in the yard and easily accepted our presence when we photographed it. Nikon D3, Nikon 200-400mm f/4 lens at 280mm, f/9.0 at 1/200 second, ISO 2000, and manual exposure.
that nest in the open are often habituated to humans, unafraid, and not harmed by human presence or photography.
Here too, as always, it’s important for the successful photographer to know his subject intimately. If birds are habituated to human presence or otherwise tolerant of your presence, shoot! Recently, a family of dusky flycatchers and another family of northern flickers nesting in our yard offered excellent photo opportunities with no protest to our presence near the nests. Several pairs of mountain bluebirds raise families in our yard and one pair eats meal worms out of Barbara’s outstretched hand. We photograph them.
Wildlife photography is a life-long journey. Your skills will improve throughout the trip, as ours still do, while you enjoy the time you spend with wildlife. Your images will be failures all too often, but will occasionally be prideful achievements. As the trip through this life-long venture progresses, your images will gradually change from the occasional decent image to the frequent publishable or prize-winning image. Do enjoy the journey into the wonderful world of wildlife photography and do be considerate of your subjects and the other people you meet along the way. Be sure to share your images and stories with all of us!
Finally, a few words about the evolution of this book. Like our previous books on nature photography, this one too is a joint effort. My main job is to determine content, although Barbara always makes key suggestions. I do the original writing because I type faster, and Barb carefully selects and processes the illustration images. That’s why most of the images were made by her! Just kidding—sort of! Actually, the image split is about even, we think, as we don’t keep track since neither one of us cares. Barbara carefully proofreads the book to keep me on track, to find my innumerable typos, and she corrects my spelling, grammatical, and technical blunders. Barbara is years and years ahead of me in computer skills. I can barely launch Photoshop, but she can make it do her every bidding with embarrassing ease. She deftly manages the storage and safekeeping of image files, converts our RAW files to other formats, skillfully edits them using Photoshop and ancillary software, thus producing the splendid JPEGs that appear in the book. Actually, the book only exists because of Barbara’s mastery of Photoshop and her never-ending industry, patience, tolerance, and complete dedication to the photography skills of our students and readers.
