Tips for Wildlife Photography
Each spring I look forward to seeing the new baby geese at the local park. I love watching them grow up and it’s great to be able to see some wildlife so close to home. It’s also a great place to practice and work on developing wildlife photography skills.
Since most animals move around pretty quick it’s crucial to use a fast shutter speed. For wildlife photography I usually set my camera in shutter priority mode. In this shooting mode, you’ll select the shutter speed and ISO and the camera will determine the best aperture to use in order to create a properly exposed image. I try to set the shutter speed to 1/1600 sec or higher in order to freeze the action well and get a good sharp image. A high shutter speed like this also helps to minimize the impact that camera shake can have on the sharpness of your images, especially if you’re not using a tripod. Using a tripod is great to prevent camera shake, but if you’re moving around quick or don’t want to use a tripod, try to stand as still as possible, lean the camera close to your body and hold your breath as you take your shots. In this way you kind of use your body as a tripod.
It’s also important to set your autofocus mode to continuous-servo (AI Servo on Canon cameras) which tracks moving subjects to keep them sharp and use the high speed continuous shooting mode so that you can capture several photos in quick succession.
Keeping the ISO around 100 will give you the cleanest looking images, but often when you’re shooting at a very high shutter speed you may not be capturing enough light in your shots so you’ll have to boost the ISO higher. However, keep in mind that when shooting with an ISO of 400 or higher you’ll begin to introduce noise into your photos.
Also, since it’s not often easy to get up close to wildlife, it’s important to use a zoom lens. At minimum, a zoom lens with a focal length around 70-200mm helps, but a bigger zoom lens would definitely help capture some great wildlife close-ups.
And finally, try to get as low to the ground as possible and shoot up towards your subject. This way animals look bigger in the photos.
