Tips to improve your wildlife photos
Wildlife watching on your travels? You don’t need a fancy camera to get great shots – capture some great photos with these simple tips
1. Research
Investigate where you are going, find out the best time of year, what sort of place you are staying, what sort of transport you are using, and how flexible they are. No good wanting to get up with the birds if your vehicle mates are honeymooners. No good wanting to spend days with polar bears if the ship is more interested in shopping or museums.
2. Bold
3. Light
It is not quite everything, but it is close. Back-lighting or side-lighting is generally far more interesting that full-on front lighting.
Feeling inspired? Don’t forget to enter Wanderlust’s Travel Photo of the Year competition! You could win £3000 or a photography trip to Western Australia…
4. Early and late
5. Selective
A scattergun approach is not only moronic, it is also frequently offensive and rarely delivers. ‘If you have taken it, don’t take it again’ was once said to me – and I always remember it. A cheetah on a termite mound at 6.45am is worth a hundred at 9am.
6. Knowledge and bush-craft
The more you know about your quarry, the better you will photograph it – you cannot just rely on your guides. The really great photographers have a detailed understanding of their targets and can often predict what the animal is going to do next, getting them ahead of the game.
7. Slow
8. Sharp
Get it sharp or get rid of it. There’s no such thing as ‘sharp enough’.
9. Delete
Be brutal. If you have 50 shots of a humpback doing the same thing, you only need to keep one. If you have cropped the lion or tiger’s tail off, get rid of it. If you just keep thousands of gigs ‘lost’ on a dusty hard drive, you’ll never do anything with them.
10. Long or short
11. Low
The lower you are, more impressive the shot. Simple.
12. Camouflage
Disguising yourself or your gear? OK, this is fine if you are lying in a hide in Papua New Guinea for five days trying to photo birds of paradise, but if not, don’t bother. You look ridiculous and you do not blend in. What are you, a wannabe SWAT team member or foreign correspondent? Exactly. I feel better now.
Paul Goldstein is a judge for Wanderlust Photo of the Year – he is an award-winning photographer and guides safaris and expeditions for Exodus and is co-owner of the Kicheche Camps portfolio.
Main image: Photographing snow monkeys (Shutterstock)
