Jeremiah Tolbert

For a lit­tle over a month, I have spent every week­end morn­ing and some after­noons after work out pur­su­ing local wildlife to pho­to­graph.  I’m not inex­pe­ri­enced when it comes to spot­ting and observ­ing wildlife, but throw­ing pho­tog­ra­phy into the mix has forced me to relearn a lot of old skills and add new ones to my toolkit.

1. You will never have enough reach.

I thought that buy­ing my 70-​​300mm lens (equiv­a­lent to a 600mm on a stan­dard  crop cam­era) would finally give me that power that I had always wanted.  I day­dreamed about sit­ting com­fort­ably in a lawn chair on a hill and tak­ing por­traits of ani­mals hun­dreds of yards away.  Without hav­ing looked through a lens and seen just how much mag­ni­fi­ca­tion I could get, i had no idea what to expect until I put the lens on the cam­era.  At first, I was dis­ap­pointed.  To take the kinds of ani­mal shots I wanted, I still had to get much closer than I imag­ined.  But slowly, I real­ized, I still had to get close, but not as close. I had more dis­tance between me and my sub­ject, which meant I had an even bet­ter chance of get­ting my shots before my sub­ject became uncom­fort­able and fled.

I could buy a tele­con­verter and dou­ble that at the cost of a full f-​​stop, and I might, some day.  But if you’re like me and can’t afford the ten thou­sand dol­lar fast zoom lenses, then you will prob­a­bly never be sat­is­fied with your reach.  There will always be a per­fect shot you just can’t get close enough to get.  You learn to make do, and how to get the shots you <em>can</em> get.

2. Good things hap­pen when you have patience.

It’s been a strug­gle for me, because I have that hunter’s instinct.  I don’t feel like I’m work­ing if I’m not mov­ing around, try­ing to come into con­tact with birds and ani­mals.  But when I can calm myself down and set­tle into one spot, be in the moment and take in the sights, the scene around you comes to life.  A mov­ing human is much more threat­en­ing and vis­i­ble than one who is rel­a­tively motion­less.  So far, my best shots have been taken while I was relax­ing in the grass on the banks of ponds, just soak­ing in the sun­light.  Its almost like the ani­mals can sense your des­per­a­tion and they taunt you by run­ning away.  When you relax, they do too.  I know that’s a bit of an anthro­po­mor­phiza­tion, but there’s some truth to it too.

3. You are not a silent ninja.

I am fairly good at keep­ing quiet in the wild.  I’ve spent good chunks of my life track­ing game for fun and work­ing on my skills at mov­ing qui­etly in under­brush.  I may be quiet by aver­age human stan­dards (and when I go out with oth­ers, I am con­stantly reminded of how much qui­eter I am by the stomp­ing and tromp­ing oth­ers do).  However, I am not a silent ninja that can sneak up on, well, any­thing but the most pre-​​occupied ani­mals.  In the wild, most ani­mals are on the look out for preda­tors.  They’re con­stantly in dan­ger, and their atten­tion is focused because of that.  You may think you can slowly, slowly sneak up on that beaver, but he knows you’re there already.  He knew you were there before you were aware of him.  He sim­ply hasn’t decided if you are a threat or not.  Nine times out of ten,  threat dis­tance is the same as how close you need to be to get your shot.  Funny how that works.

4. Get up early.  Really early. No, ear­lier than that.

Most ani­mals are active at dawn and dusk.  I think it’s a mat­ter of safety.  A lot of ani­mals are active at night, but there isn’t an ISO high enough to take those pic­tures, so we’re stuck using at least some form of sun­light most of the time.   I find that I have very lit­tle luck at dusk, and that’s because the areas I fre­quent are fre­quented by other humans as well.  By the end of the day, count­less peo­ple with dogs have been through the area, trau­ma­tiz­ing my sub­jects.  They flee the area to much more inac­ces­si­ble locales.

But at dawn, or just before it, things are qui­eter.  Sane peo­ple stay in bed.  I find it’s a good idea to get up well before sun­rise, get to your loca­tion, set­tle into a good spot, and then wait.  The area will come alive and sur­prise you.  And plus, the light will look much cooler at a low angle, improv­ing your shots con­sid­er­ably.  When the sun is high and bright over­head, you get much deeper, less inter­est­ing shadows.

5. Know your cam­era and lens.

All of the above will be for naught if you do not know your lens and camera’s capa­bil­i­ties and lim­i­ta­tions.  At full exten­sion, my lens is only capa­ble of f5.6.  This is not a very fast lens.  Dialed to this, you’re not get­ting a whole hell of a lot of light.  And remem­ber the rule of thumb that your shut­ter speed should at least be equal to that of your mm, and take your crop fac­tor into con­sid­er­a­tion.  So when I am shoot­ing at 300mm, my shut­ter speed needs to be 1/​600th of a sec­ond to min­i­mize cam­era shake when not using a tri­pod.  I didn’t believe this rule of thumb until I took a cou­ple of days worth of slightly blurry pho­tos.  I carry a tri­pod with me, but you don’t always have a chance to set it up, so you should know how to take an in-​​focus, prop­erly exposed shot with your lens with­out one.

Now, at the time of day we’ve dis­cussed, get­ting a 1/​600th or faster shut­ter speed isn’t easy if want a prop­erly exposed shot.  This means you have to change your sensor’s light sen­si­tiv­ity, the ISO.  The higher the ISO, the more noise, but also, the less light you need to get an exposed shot.

I have learned that with my lens and cam­era, I have to shoot at ISO 400 to get the shut­ter speeds I need to shoot fully zoomed in in the light I am usu­ally deal­ing with.  If it’s over­cast, I am basi­cally screwed, because the noise above ISO 400 on my Olympus is unac­cept­able, and I really, really hate shoot­ing with tripods when your sub­ject can run or fly away any second.

I’ve learned to be much more aware of my camera’s set­tings. I don’t always shoot in man­ual, but I do more so now than I ever have before.  I gen­er­ally shoot in aper­ture pri­or­ity mode, bring­ing my aper­ture down until I get the shut­ter speed I need.  Most of the time, I want the bokeh that comes with hav­ing a nar­row aper­ture any­way, unless I am shoot­ing macro work.  But that’s the sub­ject for another post.

Concluding Thoughts

The more you’re out there shoot­ing, the more you learn about your sub­jects.  I shoot wildlife pho­tog­ra­phy because I find nature the most beau­ti­ful thing there is, and I want to share the beauty I see out there with oth­ers. My cam­era is a kind of Noah’s ark.  I want to get two of every­thing inside it.   With this tips, hope­fully, you can come closer to nature too.