capturing the moment ch 4

8/9/2019 Capturing the Moment Ch 4

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Capturing the

Moment

TAKING PHOTOS OF WHAT YOU REALLY SEE

Volume 1: Observe, Aim & Capture.


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Pets in the house or lions on the savanna; there are ways of taking memorable pictures of them

without being eaten.

More than once.

CHAPTER 4

1

Photographing Animals


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Never work with animals or children. Good advice, and like all

good advice, something I regularly ignore.

Much of my life has revolved around animals (family included).

From the age of 6 years old I have loved animals and wanted to be

a vet surgeon. That need became an obsession.That obsession

became a vocation. That vocation became 40 years of hard labour.

It became obsession when my favourite aunt told me to train for a

‘proper job’ and keep animals as pets. Red rag to a bull.

Not that I regret it. Some of it I do, of course. The endless nights on

call followed by endless days. It may be true that “I knew what I

was getting myself into”, but until you have experienced it, there is

no way on earth that you can truly ‘know’.

Every job has its downside, my least favourite bugbear was thedifficult clients. Most clients were wonderful, but it only takes one

to sour the barrel. The worst of all was a client who killed her dog

by hugely overfeeding it to the point where it’s weight (and

consequent arthritis) stopped it from being able to walk at all.

After being seen as an emergency and being told that there was

nothing further that could humanely be done, she went on to give

it multiple doses of ibuprofen (a drug highly toxic to dogs) over

the next 2 days, which led to it dying a most horrible death. She

blamed me, and spent two years taking me through courts and

professional disciplinary procedures. Experiences like that leave a

bad taste on your mouth.

None of which has anything to do with the animals themselves of

course, although a few of them have been somewhat difficult and

left me with permanent scars…

Despite all that (and oh so much more) I still love animals and love

photographing them. I hope that shows in the work I do. If you

love something, let it show, and what better way than through

photography?

Taking photos of your pets is one thing, photographing wildlife is

significantly more difficult.

Normally I would take only my standard camera and lens with me

to photograph pets, but for wildlife, we need to give more thought.

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SAFARI

If you choose to go on safari, where should you go and what

should you take with you?

There is, of course, a wide choice of areas to visit to photograph,

much depending on your tastes. I am hesitant to advise on the best, although that usually doesn’t stop me...

The majority of safaris are in Africa, but where is top spot? There

are many countries well worth visiting, but if you want a wealth of

wildlife, more than you can sake a stick at (inadvisable), then the

Masai Mara or Serengeti have to be at the top of the list.

Everyone’s favourite is different, but once in your life you should

attempt to see the great migration.

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Watching some of the two million beasts that cross the River Mara

every year (often several times; their sense of direction isn’t too

good) is both unique on this planet and utterly dramatic. It

symbolises the struggle of life and death that happens daily in

nature, only on a truly massive scale.

If you are lucky enough to see it, you can never forget it. If you

also witness the death and destruction, it can be life-changing.

Not all can deal with it. Many turn away. It is nature; red in tooth

and claw … and horn and hoof. Many die in this annual struggle

to find food.

The challenge for the photographer it to take photos that make it

personal, that bring home the struggle, not just focusing on the

numbers.

The timing of the crossing varies each year, it is almost as if they

don’t have timekeeping devices!

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You need to plan ahead with your photography, think about how

to make it more interesting, either by way of the surroundings of

the animal, by what it is doing, or by something you might be able

to add to it later in post-processing. Let’s look at a few examples.

The plain head shot.

This is potentially the most boring of shots.

Set the camera on ‘User Setting 1’. The aperture should already be

at wide open so the only thing to do is press the back-button to

focus on the eyes and click.

I’ll explain the aperture settings in the next chapter.

Vignetting can be added later to add focus to the head.

To add interest if zooming in close to an animal, try to take the

picture when it is doing something, for instance:

Although this dwarf mongoose is cute, the picture can be later

cropped and altered to make it stand out more (I’ll cover this in

Part 2).

The next photo now has punch, but the important bit was the

capture, taking the photo in the first place. Always take more of the

surrounding than you think may be necessary, it’s easy to crop,

impossible to go the other way…

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Add direction to a photo

If the animal is moving. Make sure the photo includes the space in

front of it. Use the rule of thirds to judge this.

The Rule of Thirds

This simple principle helps you work out an

effective position for subjects in your

photographs. Look at the grid lines on the

following photos:

Running dog:

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In the next photo, the dog was running to the right, but looking to

the left. Open the space on the left:

Some cameras will let you put grid lines on the viewer. This can be

of help to beginners.

Because these photos were of dogs moving, I need to be sure that

the shutter speed was enough to stop blurring. A wide open

aperture allows in most light, thus would normally be enough. If

not, use the ‘S’ setting and set the shutter at 1/640s or 1/1000s.

This would typically be necessary in poor light situations. More on

aperture in the next chapter.

Take photos of animals doing something:

If you can catch them doing anything, it is much more interesting

to look at.

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Looking for the next dinner is always a good one… Take photos from an unusual angle:

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In motion: The Unusual:

Note that this is the first wildlife photo I’ve shown you using the

U2 setting. This needs some explanation.

The U2 setting sets the camera up to take three shots at different

exposures in rapid fire succession. These can then be used to create

an HDR image (the logic behind this was explained in chapter 1,

how to make the image from the three photos will be explained in

Part 2).

Using HDR is somewhat contentious. Using it with wildlife is a

definite no-no.

Except…

I think that there are four good reasons for trying bracketing with

some wildlife shots.

I. When the animal picture is part of a landscape, especially

when sky is included. The HDR processing can bring out the

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detail in the landscape, especially with clouds (more on this

in the next chapter) The animals themselves are moving

(albeit slowly in this photo) thus must be excluded from the

processing. Full explanation in Part 2.

II. If an animal is not moving (and I don’t mean dead) HDR may

work. Animals spend a lot of time not moving, this can be away of adding real depth to the photo. To be honest, it rarely

works, but when it does it can be fantastic. See the leopard

photo below,

III. Simply having three different exposures can be useful in

difficult lighting conditions.

IV. It’s fun!

I love this photo, it has real punch. Taking the three photos in

quick succession meant timing the shot with the leopards breath.

Even so, a couple of the whiskers moved and had to be edited out.

...and the cute:

People love cute animals!

Observe around you, spot the shot & click.

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Don’t forget that all around you is a landscape that can only add to

your photo…

Even if it means cheating and adding an animal that was not even

there…

(To be fair, it wasn’t very far away, it simply refused to pose in the

right place…)

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Bird PhotographyPhotos of birds are everywhere. They are making a bid for world

domination. If you must dip your toe into the vast world of bird

photography, be prepared. Photo sites are flooded with such

photos. It is a world of frustration and a world of patience. The

two do not fit well together.

Obviously a long lens is needed, but that brings with it inherent

problems, not least is that, on focusing totally on capturing an

image go something prone to flitting off without notice, but it

makes it even more difficult to take in the birds surroundings. And

you need it’s surrounding to have a chance of making the shot

interesting.

Despite this, the same rules apply, the rule of thirds, composition,

i n t e r e s t .CONCLUSIONS:

All except one photo in this chapter used the User Preset 1. Thus

the camera mode was set to Aperture Priority with the aperture

wide open to let in as much light as possible to keep the subject

from blurring. This also keeps the Depth of Field narrow.

So far, so easy. For wildlife, generally we use User Setting 1 at it’s

standard setting.

Observe, check mode dial, adjust aperture if necessary to change

the depth of view, click.

Ah yes, Depth of Field. What’s all that about then? ...

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capturing the moment ch 4

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