Tips for Taking Wildlife Photos

By Dana Benner
Updated on September 6, 2024
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by Dana Benner

Looking for tips for taking wildlife photos? Get a handle on a few digital-camera techniques to bag stunning outdoor wildlife photos.

The old saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” is spot on. While some people can form images in their minds from words alone, others appreciate photos to make a description clear and stimulate thought. When I speak about photography, I often use the word “hunting” in the context of “searching.” Every time I venture out into nature, I’m searching for a story to tell about how people interact with the world around them. I figured out long ago I could tell these stories using both words and images.

I “hunt” for just about everything in the outdoors: the people, animals, and scenery that comprise our world. In stark contrast with wedding or portrait photography, with outdoor photography, you have very little control over your subjects’ movements or the weather; there’s no posing for the “perfect” shot. Outdoor photography is often about being in the right place at the right time. Even still, you can achieve greater success by getting to know the environment in which you’re working and the equipment you use.

Know Your Camera

Cameras have changed immensely since I first started shooting some 50 years ago. In the early days, when film was king and digital photography wouldn’t become mainstream for decades, you never knew whether you captured the image or not until you got the film developed! The best photographers in the business took hundreds of photos in hopes that one would pay off – which meant they needed to carry hundreds of rolls of film into the field with them.

Like most people of the 1960s and 1970s, I started with a Kodak Instamatic camera that used 126 film (35 millimeters wide) and progressed to 110 film (16 millimeters wide). I honed my skills in adjusting depth of field and shutter speed through trial and error. To use a hunting analogy, these cameras were single-shot rifles compared with today’s digital semiautomatics. Early digital cameras weren’t anything to write home about, but today, plenty of high-quality digital cameras – and even most cellphones – can produce exceptional photos if you spend time learning their capabilities.

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