10 Simple Yet Powerful Wildlife Photography Tips

On this video wildlife and nature photographer Steve Perry (from backcountrygallery) looks at 10 simple tips he uses himself to get better nature photos.

So here are the 10 tips – they might be simple – some might be almost obvious but if you make sure you follow them – you will get better wildlife/nature photos for sure:

  1. Get out early (or late) – sunrise and sunset are the time for best light – use them!
  2. Drop to eye level – if you are shooting an animal on the ground – go low.
  3. Watch your backgrounds – Try and make the background as important as the animal that you are shooting.
  4. Never follow an animal – always try to be ahead and anticipate its moves.
  5. To get closer, look distracted – don’t march right towards an animal, move in a zig-zag pattern and look at the ground (while still keeping the animal in your sight from time to time).
  6. Outsmart the wind – if you have a lot of  wind – turn on IS and remove the hood which adds vibration (also – always work with the tripod with the center column lowered to the minimum).
  7. Shoot a longer sequence  in slow shutter speeds – this sounds strange but if your are shooting at slow shutter speeds – any vibration might be noticeable – shooting a long sequence even of a stationary animal can make sure you get one right.
  8. Make your buffer last longer – use shirt bursts, faster memory cards if possible, go down to 12bit instead of 14 bit RAW files (usually you won’t see the difference) finally – if all else fails and you still need more-  just shoot JPEG (as a last resort).
  9. Use AF point for composition – don’t focus and recompose (as much as possible) as animals move and you can loose focus.
  10. Use the center AF point for thought situations – the center AF point is usually the most sensitive – if you can’t seem to get an AF right with any other point – stick to the center one.
You can check out many more helpful photography tips on our Photography tips section here on LensVid. We have a special page dedicated to all of Perry ‘s videos which you can find here.
Iddo Genuth
Iddo Genuth is the founder and chief editor of LensVid.com. He has been a technology reporter working for international publications since the late 1990's and covering photography since 2009. Iddo is also a co-founder of a production company specializing in commercial food and product visual content.

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