There is one sure way to improve your photography skills and that is to continuously practice by taking lots and lots of pictures. This is especially true for wildlife photography, because you can only hone those skills through practice.
When you first start out in this hobby, you’ll probably be snapping photos of anything that moves. You’ll probably be holding down that shutter button in hopes of getting one good image out of a sequence. That’s good. Get it out of your system. You may get a few good images that way, and even a couple of outstanding ones, but you won’t be able to do it consistently. It’s only when you start to take your time and pay attention to the exposure, lighting, and composition of the shot that you will begin to take good photographs on a consistent basis.
When I first read about wildlife photographers composing images I thought that they were off their rocker. After all, you don’t have a lot of time to get an image of that otter crossing the canal bank. That’s where the practice comes in. Go out and shoot and shoot and shoot. Get 10,000 images of that Tri-colored heron. Then one day you’re going to see a Tri-colored heron and just do nothing. You’ve already worked it out in your head that any image you take of this particular Tri-colored heron isn’t going to be any better than the 10,000 you already have in your library. You’ve just composed your first image by not taking that shot.
Composition is not necessarily about placing the subject exactly where you want within the frame. In fact in many cases in wildlife photography, the action is happening so fast that you won’t have time to compose an image the way a traditional landscape photographer does. Instead you’ll compose by positioning yourself in a location where you’ll get the best light, with the best background. If the action is fast and furious, by all means take what you can get, but if time permits take the time to make sure that your camera settings are correct. Check your histogram for exposure; recompose if there are distracting elements in the frame. Composition in wildlife photography is more about knowing when to take the picture and when not to.
The next time you see that Tri-colored heron, you’ll know if the shot is worth taking. It will be well lit, properly exposed, with a nicely blurred background with the bird’s eye looking at the camera while it is holding a frog in its mouth. Okay, that may be a bit of a stretch, but it’s certainly something to strive for. You’ll only get there through practice.
You can see some of my weekly “practice” shots in the December gallery.
