Creative Wildlife Photography Tips with Sabine Stols

hello everyone my name is sabine and today's episode is all about creative captures one of the categories in the annual pangolin photo challenge is called creative captures and if you would like some inspiration tips and techniques on how to create unique and different looking wildlife photographs stay tuned plus if you haven't already make sure that you enter this year's challenge by following the link in the description and stand the chance to win some amazing prizes including a photo safari to visit us right here in beautiful botswana [Music] now before i dive right into my favorite techniques i think we need to establish what creative photography even means as the field and interpretation can be pretty vast where some may consider an abstract out-of-focus photograph as being creative others may say it is just another excuse to call a bad image creative and as much as the lack of photography skills doesn't give a photographer a creative eye getting the exposure perfect in camera or following strict photographic rules does not necessarily make a creative photograph either so in my opinion a photograph only qualifies as being creative if the photographer intentionally uses certain techniques or elements to reach a desired result setting the image apart from what would be seen as a common picture so let's adopt a few different approaches to get creative one of the most powerful tools for creative photography is using light and manipulating it to achieve a certain effect this of course requires you to understand the exposure triangle and be of the auto mode on your camera if you do not shoot in full manual mode exposure compensation will be your new best friend as you can override your camera's light meter and get exactly the exposure you want check out danielle's video linked on top if you're not familiar with what exposure compensation is and how it works okay let's start off on the dark side with what is called low-key photography the loki technique can completely change the mood of a photograph by adding lots of drama and a sense of mystery because it predominantly contains dark tones so lots of shadows to create such an image all you need is a light source preferably the early or late sun of the day that illuminates the animal or parts of it and dark shade behind the subject to eliminate most of the distracting background since there is going to be lots of blacks in the image you want to try and keep the iso as low as possible as noise shows easier in dark areas of an image that means shooting with the aperture wide open to let in as much light as possible while the shallow depth of field helps to blur any distracting elements in the background that might still be visible regulating the exposure in loki images should not be left to the camera's light meter unless you choose spot metering and your super accurate metering of the brightest part in the image if you use any of the other light metering modes on your camera you most probably will find that you not get the desired look because the majority of shadows within the scene will make the camera try and balance the lighting giving you a far brighter image than you had in mind if you shoot in full manual mode no problem as you can take full control and either crank up the shutter speed or lower the iso until you get the background nice and dark while still retaining enough detail on the subject when shooting in any of the auto exposure modes aperture priority shutter priority even manual with auto iso use the exposure compensation tool and expose to the left or the minus side to force your camera to give you a darker look i usually start out on -3 stops of exposure and check the result on the back of the lcd screen to see if i need to make any further adjustments the highlight alert function is super helpful for this because it shows if any highlights on the subject are blown out and if that is the case don't hesitate to even go darker the direction of the lighting in low-key photography can create very different looking results and basically describes the location of the light in relationship to the subject front lighting where the sun is shining from behind you as the photographer evenly illuminates the subject and eliminates shadows revealing all the beautiful details combined with a dark shady background this can give the impression as if the image was taken in a studio environment however it can look a little bit flat because of the lack of shadows and that is where site lighting comes in with side lighting the sun needs to be off to either side at an angle of between 45 to 90 degrees revealing the textures and profile giving the subject a three-dimensional nature this generally adds interest and a strong emotion to a scene or portrait plus it often lends itself to a classic black and white processing the third option is to have the light source behind the subject called lighting or in combination with the loki method room lighting this technique works great with animals that have long fur or even with feathers of birds where the sun can shine through from the back highlighting only the outline of the subject it is essential here to make sure that there isn't any overlapping with other animals or elements as we are capturing little to no detail of the subject itself and the viewer has to recognize it by its shape elements like dust water spray rain and even insects can create a wonderful setting for a backlit animal and the background doesn't always have to be completely black if there is elements that can add to the mood to the image leave them visible another way to get creative having the light source behind the subject is a silhouette shot silhouettes are great because of their simplicity and once again it is all about the shape of the animal this time though we need a bright background like the sky or even water positioning yourself as low as possible ensures that you can include as much sky as possible in the frame it also puts your subject higher and creates a unique perspective the easiest way to get the exposure right is to meter for the sky using the exposure lock and then recomposing alternatively underexpose until your subject is black and featureless be aware and try to avoid any dark elements cutting through the subject that will break the shape and might ruin the shot shooting into the light can be a challenging affair especially when using autofocus a little trickier shoot with a single focus point and move it into a position between the subject and the sky so in other words in a place with high contrast this will make it much easier for your camera to autofocus if you've enjoyed the tips and image examples so far please take a sec to hit that like button thank you and let's transition to the bright side unlike loki photos that are dark and moody a high key image conveys an airy upbeat and light feel high key lighting is bright and leaves almost no blacks or mid-tones and essential for this technique is to have the subject against a bright uniform background this could be anything from the sky to snow sand water or even light colored grass overcast days are easiest for high key shots as you can basically shoot into any direction as long as you have the bright background behind the subject if the sun is out please make sure to shoot against the light kind of like a silhouette in contrast though to the silhouettes high key images need to be exposed for the subject only completely disregarding the background and you can achieve this once again by using either spot metering or pushing the exposure compensation to the right the plus side until the background becomes perfectly white almost looking like a fine art painting i personally always start out on plus 3ev and then take it from there the highlight alert function again on your camera can really help you by showing where in the image detail has been lost for a high key image clipping in the entire background is the aim really but without clipping too much details on the subject itself what you need to know though is that heavily overexposing will increase the iso and introduce noise in your image so keep your aperture also wide open and slow down the shutter speed equivalent to the focal length if you are shooting a stationary subject just to avoid those extremely high isos unless of course you do expect certain movement of the animal then you would need to compromise and keep the shutter speed up and just lift with the higher noise and as another tip in post processing increase the whites and blacks boost the clarity and contrast sliders and optionally convert the image to black and white for a more artistic look by the way these type of shots make for some really nice contemporary prints as well and of course high keys can also be colorful this lilac breasted roller was photographed on an overcast day and by over exposing one and two-thirds the sky got washed out building a stark contrast to the beautiful colors of the bird so now that we've covered some creative lighting techniques what other methods are there to capture unique looking images well playing with your camera's shutter speed for example and slowing things down can be another way keeping the shutter open for a longer period of time can be challenging in very bright ambient light so this technique will work best on either heavily overcast days or generally when the light is low like early morning or late afternoon the first technique that uses a slow shutter speed is called panning and the idea here is to pen the camera with a moving subject while continuously shooting the tricky part is to match the speed of the pending camera to the speed of the subject in motion to ensure that some parts like the head or eyes are in focus while the moving parts like legs or wings of a bird show the motion blur you also need to choose a subject that moves parallel to you not one that comes straight towards you or heads away if you are not confident with your camera's manual mode i suggest using shutter priority with the iso set to auto then you select a slow shutter speed which very much depends on the subject you shoot and fire away for birds and flight i like to use a shutter speed anywhere between 30th to 80th of a second the larger the bird just lower the shutter speed for mammals running about 50th to 110 of a second and if they are walking instead of running i suggest around a tenth of a second these are of course just rough numbers to get you started so experiment and see what you get sounds easier than it is though this technique certainly requires some skill and trial and error you might have to take hundreds of photos before nailing one so don't be discouraged if it doesn't work straight away and keep on trying especially when the light is low and you anyway would have had two high isos using a fast shutter speed instead instead of panning you can simply also slow the shutter speed down if you anticipate a short movement of the subject and keep the camera steady while shooting like in this photograph of a male lion shaking its mane i saw that the flies were bothering him for a while and speculated that once he gets up he would shake his head so i slowed down the shutter speed to 400th of a second to freeze most of his face while the motion in the main stayed visible i was simply guessing here but i think it worked out pretty well let me know in the comments below what you think if you find a subject that isn't in motion at all you could create the motion yourself by moving the camera or lens during the exposure in this image i created movement by zooming in close onto a point of interest and as soon as i hit the shutter quickly rotating the zoom wheel back out creating this tunnel effect it does help a great deal if you have the camera on a tripod or another support like a beanbag for example because if you shake too much during the exposure by rotating the zoom wheel absolutely nothing will be in focus you could also reverse the zoom and go from wide to close getting a different look entirely either way make sure to be on continuous shooting once again and keep clicking increasing your success rate i found that shutter speeds between a fifth of a second and a 15th of a second work well for this technique and if you struggle with the zoom method altogether you can alternatively move the camera slowly up or down or left or right during exposure and introduce some blur this way with a slow shutter speed you can really bring scenes alive so next time you go out keep an eye out for such an opportunity i really hope you got inspired by these few tips and perhaps you have some more to add in the comment section below as always if you haven't already make sure to subscribe and click the bell icon to get notified for any upcoming new videos on our channel and if you like to join us on an unforgettable photo safari click the link in the description see you in one of the next episodes bye-bye

Channel: Pangolin Wildlife Photography

Views: 15,489

Keywords: wildlife photography tips and techniques, wildlife photography tips and tricks, wildlife photography tips, wildlife photography tips for beginners, bird photography tips and tricks, wildlife photography, wildlife photography for beginners, wildlife photography help, creative wildlife photography, tips for wildlife photography, wildlife photogrpahy tips, how to get good wildlife photos, nature photography, nature photography for beginners, taking pictures of wildlife

Id: UC4QrtGkGtk

Length: 15min 3sec (903 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 04 2021