Photographing Wildlife

Hello everyone! Welcome to my first blog! Let me start by saying thank you for following along and giving this a look! So without further ado let’s get into it! Photographing wildlife, while I am no expert at photographing wildlife, I have been an avid outdoorsman my entire life and a big game hunter for over 20 years. That being said, I do have some experience when it comes to wildlife. So, how do I find wildlife? My advice is to perform adequate research into the species you are searching for, their behaviors, where they live, their sleep and wake patterns, what they eat, etc. Once you do this then you need to get into the field and find where they are, once you locate the subject(s) you are attempting to photograph, it comes down to time and patience. You need to position yourself in an adequate location and position to capture what you're looking for, whether that be on foot via hiking or in a hide of some sort. This depends not only on your personal preference, but also on what you're trying to photograph. For example, if I wanted to photograph elk. I might be better off sitting in a hide or a blind on a known trail they travel on or sitting in a blind on a waterhole that they are known to frequent. The alternative to this is walking and shooting, which I admittedly tend to do while photographing birds. Some other considerations to think about is the time of year, the weather, your equipment, the animals mating/ breeding season, and so on. Let’s use elk as an example once again. I know, based off of experience, that the best time to photograph elk, is during the rut(mating season), this is when bull elk(males) are gonna be the most present, easy to find and most aggressive, now the rut typically falls in September. Based on that knowledge, I know the weather in northern Arizona in September will be mild during the day and chilly in the mornings and evenings, thus giving me an idea of what I need to wear and what kind of forecast I should expect. The next consideration is my gear, do I have a lens with a long enough reach to capture the photos I am looking to capture, do I have a good and sturdy tripod, is my camera in proper working order, do I have empty SD cards, etc? All things to consider before going out to the field. While in the field, you will need to consider the weather, the light and where the sun is in the sky, is there cloud cover, and what settings to use in camera. Typically when it comes to wildlife, the best times to shoot are during the golden hour, which is the first 2-4 hours after sunrise, depending on location and time of year. The golden hour can also be found during the last 1-2 hours before sunset. It is possible to shoot during the day, but you need to consider how bright the sun is where your shooting, as well as whether or not the wildlife your attempting to photograph is active at midday or not. Most of the time, wildlife in Arizona, will not be active during the middle of the day, due to Arizona’s heat. All of these things and your own artistic style will also determine what settings to use in camera to photograph said wildlife. Typically you will want a fast enough shutter speed to freeze any action, this can be done by using 1/500 of a second for large slow moving wildlife, to 1/2000 of a second or higher for faster moving wildlife, such as birds or animals in action. Next you want to look at your f-stop, or your aperture, this is one of a few ways to control how much light reaches your cameras sensor, along with your shutter speed and ISO. For me, I typically prefer a nice out of focus background for most of my photos, like a portrait style of photography. This means I want a smaller aperture, as this will give me a shallower depth of field, meaning everything else in the background will be out of focus. If you prefer a background in focus, then simply use a large depth of field. I should also note that in many cases your aperture will also be dependent on the the minimum and maximum aperture that your lens has. Lastly is ISO, for me I shoot in manual mode and I control my shutter speed and my aperture, but I set my ISO to auto ISO and let the camera do its thing from there. But do know that ISO is dependent on how much light there is while photographing, meaning more light equals lower ISO, less light equals a higher ISO. This is by no means an exhaustive list on how to photograph wildlife, rather a few tips and pointers, that I thought would be helpful to anyone looking to start photographing wildlife. I will do more blogs on photographing wildlife and even more specific blogs for example, photographing birds, in the future. Until then if anyone should have further or more detailed questions about photographing wildlife, please feel free to reach out to me for further advice.