| What
is ACI?
ACI
Directory
aci-net
egroup
ACI
Awards
Newsletters
Conferences
Join
ACI
Job
Board
Committees
Websites
& Agency listing
ACI
Home Page |
The Balance Wheel: Summer 2003
 Top
Ten Tips to Better Wildlife Photography
By Matt Lindler, NWTF
- Keep the sun to your back. This ensures the scene
is always well lit.
- Use a tripod. Longer lenses magnify camera movement,
so mount your camera to a tripod to eliminate this factor.
- Squeeze the shutter release like you squeeze
a rifle’s trigger.
- Don’t be afraid to turn your camera on a vertical
axis. A scene may look better vertically than it does horizontally.
Shoot both ways.
- Centered is not always better. Sometimes the
focus of an image looks better when it is not dead center in the frame.
When you photograph a moving subject, give the subject room to move
in the direction it is heading. If a turkey is walking from the left
to right, give it more room on the right to walk into. This makes
for a more pleasing composition than if the turkey was walking off
of the frame.
- Use a blind. A tent blind or natural blind hides
your movement and allows you to change lenses and film when the animals
are within shooting range. Plus, tent blinds offer substantial protection
from wind and rain.
- Take a lot of photos. Film is the cheapest investment
in nature photography. Compare $5/roll versus the $5,000 you might
spend on a lens.
- Vary your shooting angle. Shoot a scene from
as many angles as you feasibly can. This not only means from all sides,
but also at different heights.
- Experiment with different exposure settings.
Shooting at different exposure settings above and below what the camera’s
meter reads is called bracketing. Sometimes your camera’s meter can
be fooled by extremes in light and shadow.
- Shoot at different focal lengths. Zoom in and
out on a subject. Get close-ups as well as wide shots. This is as
important as varying the format from vertical to horizontal.
Matt Lindler was one winner in the 2001 ACI Awards
given for photography.
top |
