WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY TIPS - Simple things you can do to IMPROVE YOUR CHANCES of getting the shot

hey i'm out here right now with some bank swallows this is another new species for me i've never spent time with or photographed these guys before but i'm down here by this river and they're on the opposite bank excavating these holes out of the bank and they'll use those holes to nest in here so i it's just been fascinating watching them like i said i've never spent time with these guys before so it's just been a lot of fun watching them that's actually not what this video is about though i wanted to talk this week about a picture that i took a few weeks ago it's a picture i can't stop thinking about one of them one that i'm very happy with but i almost didn't get it a few weeks ago my dad and i went out to grand teton and yellowstone national parks and we were able to spend just a couple of days out there photographing some of the wildlife and we had this amazing encounter with a wolf wolves are my all-time favorite animals and encounters with wolves for me are extremely few and far between very rare and encounters like the one that we had are even more rare this wolf came so close to us and he stopped he looked right at us and i was able to get a sharp you know portrait picture of him looking right at me i was a picture i almost missed though because when he came up so close i literally just froze up i couldn't think uh i was just yeah i froze up and i would have missed the picture had i not done a few things beforehand when we went out that evening to look for wildlife and so those are the things that i wanted to talk about in this video just a few simple you know basic tips things that i do each time i go out to help ensure that i get the picture and not miss a picture because it would have been so easy to to miss this picture and i would have still been kicking myself had i missed it so that's what i wanted to talk about in this video again just a few simple tips things that i do that can help ensure that you get the picture when you have a surprise encounter with an animal or each time you go out on a hike or you know looking for wildlife so with that let's jump right in and talk about a few of these items again these are just very simple things that you can do to help ensure that you don't miss a picture if you have a surprise encounter with an animal something like that these aren't any mind-blowing photography how-to's just very simple tips and if you have any of your own things that you do regularly to help ensure that you get the picture let me know in the comments i love learning from you guys first thing that i wanted to talk about is something very easy to get into the habit of doing and something very useful to get into the habit of doing anytime i go out expecting to take a picture i have my camera out of my backpack i have it turned on and i have my settings ready i've got everything exposed for the light that i have available at that time so if you're going out on a hike and it's sunny before you even start get everything ready all your settings ready exposed so if something runs across the trail in front of you all you have to do is lift your camera and take the picture it's ready to go uh if you're out hiking in that same scenario and all of a sudden it gets really overcast and you can tell it's going to be cloudy for a while update your settings get it ready with this wolf encounter that we had like i had said before i froze up to the point where i couldn't even think i don't know what happened uh but i was just so nervous that i wasn't going to get the picture that i almost didn't get the picture if i hadn't i've had my camera settings ready i would have missed the picture but all i had to do was raise the camera and i was able to get the picture so that's something very basic yet very useful that you can do when i started off with photography i that's something i didn't do and i can't even tell you how many pictures awesome scenarios uh that i missed because i wasn't ready and i was turning my camera on i was way overexposed you know different things like that uh pictures i could have gotten because i just wasn't ready for him going right along with that is what settings you use when setting the exposure on your camera you know there are essentially limitless combinations of settings that you can use to set the exposure on your camera so for me i found there's certain things that i prefer over others for instance for wildlife photography generally i want the fastest shutter speed i can get while having the lowest iso within an acceptable range so when i you know set the settings on my camera oh there's a muskrat i'm gonna get him i think real quick um but when i'm setting the uh sorry i can't multitask holy cow oh he's coming let's see where he goes yeah i can't multitask sorry um but yeah like i was saying um for me personally i like the fastest shutter speed i can get and i've got essentially an allowable range of iso um that i prefer so i'll you know set my iso and then get the fastest shutter speed that i can and obviously you know i don't shoot every picture that way i do change my you know settings if i'm looking for something a little bit different but all i'm saying is know what the settings on your camera are going to do and set them accordingly so for instance i was in alaska one year backpacking and i had set the settings on my camera already and i had set them for a very fast shutter speed because i knew that there were bears in the area they might be running through the river fishing there were tarmigan in the area and those can be pretty quick birds so when i set the settings exposing for the light that i had i did so with a very fast shutter speed and the scenario that i ran into was uh i was down by the river and the bear came out of the brush and almost out of nowhere and he started walking through the water and my shutter speed was fast enough where i was able to get the water coming off of his claws and it wasn't blurred or anything is very detailed and it turned out to be a pretty cool image i was very happy with it and so for wildlife photography personally i prefer a higher shutter speed and you know if you've got your settings set beforehand like i was saying before you can get some very sharp images on a moment's notice uh you can literally just lift and go and get your images so those are a few things that i i look for or things that i set beforehand something else that helps a lot with wildlife photography is knowing your subject and what they're likely to do for instance with this wolf when we first saw him he was quite a ways off in the brush and some other people had stopped on the the road and were looking at him through binoculars and he ducked behind some sagebrush and the people they a lot of the other people they stayed there just watching in that area looking for him and i turned to my dad and i said let's go further up because i have a feeling he's he's ducked behind that brush but he's going to keep going so we went further up kind of read the train a little bit and we stopped and uh decided that that was going to be a good location to wait for him to emerge and sure enough within just a few minutes he came up over this little hill in between these rocks and he was so close to us and that's when we got our picture now a lot of that was probably luck i'm not saying that i can foresee the future and see what animals are going to do no i can't but i've spent a lot of time observing animals and with time and practice you're able to better guess what an animal might do in a certain scenario so again we got extremely lucky with that encounter but some of it i do believe has to do with knowing what that wolf was likely to do and making an educated decision on where to go to get that picture again i don't want this to sound like i can read animals minds i wish i could i wish i knew exactly what they were gonna do and when they were gonna do it i can't do that though but again with time observing different species you can determine a lot of times beforehand what they're going to do this comes into effect a lot with a lot of the grouse species that i spend time with you can almost guess when the males are going to fight or display you know things like that with uh deer and moose and bighorn sheep you can almost always determine when they're going to do certain behavior what triggers that behavior so understanding the animal and its behavior can really help you in wildlife photography because you you can make very educated decisions and a lot of those times you can get some awesome pictures that you may have missed because you would have otherwise been two seconds too late or something and so just spend time observing animals and uh it always pays off just the enjoyment factor of doing so but also what you're able to learn and then apply into your photography to get better pictures down the road it really does help the last and probably most simple tip that i wanted to talk about and it's not even really a tip just advice i guess is uh just get out and practice practice as much as you can and i've talked about this before in other videos but as wildlife photographers we should be getting out as often as we can and practicing you know even if the subject that you're practicing with isn't your ideal subject to photograph it doesn't matter just get out and practice you know ideally i'd be out with wolves and bears and foxes and eagles you know all day every day photographing them and practicing with them but i can't so i go down to my local duck park and i'll practice the ducks flying around there so when i do have an encounter with an eagle i'm able to get the flight shot that i want or you know i'll practice with my son running around the yard just tracking him and taking pictures so when i do run into a wolf i'm able to get the picture that i want the point is you just need to get out and practice you know the video that i did recently last week i went out and spent time with the wild mustangs in the desert and those are just awesome animals to get out with i had so much fun but the main reason for me for going out there to spend time with them is because i wanted to practice subjects moving subjects i wanted to practice tracking them while shooting video that was my personal goal behind that um outing was to get more practice with uh yeah tracking subjects while shooting video it's something that i've been trying to practice a lot on and it was great to get out with those horses not an animal i spent a lot of time with but a great animal to to practice with so i did another video that i did recently with the osprey nest great opportunity to get out and practice getting bird and flight shots you know the setting wasn't ideal for me they were on a man-made nesting platform but they were flying back and forth repeatedly from the nest and i had essentially endless opportunities to practice getting bird and flight shots so the point is just get out and practice as much as you can so you are ready when you do have that dream encounter and you're ready to get the pictures that you want you know going back to this wolf it's something i've been thinking about a lot for the last few weeks and how i almost missed that shot but because my camera was out it was turned on it was ready i had it exposed i had the practice where changing the settings was just muscle memory at that point i was able to get a picture that i'm very happy with that portrait picture you know it's not some crazy action or anything but i've been wanting a wolf portrait a black wolf particularly portrait for a long time and so i'm extremely happy with the picture that i got but i am convinced that it would not have happened had i not been ready with the camera with the settings had i not been practiced i had settings down you know by muscle memory all that stuff and so all the things that i've talked about in this video um you know dissecting that scenario in my brain these were the points that i came up with that led to me getting that picture that i was you know two seconds away from missing i hope you've enjoyed this week's video i really just wanted to take the opportunity to review with a few of the things i wish i had known or understood better when getting into wildlife photography i hope it's been helpful and i hope you've enjoyed i'll be back out with another video next week if you're new to the channel i do come out with weekly videos and if you haven't subscribed already please consider doing so uh i'm going to wrap things up here though i've got a storm blowing in and i'm about to lose my light so i would really like to get some more footage of these bank swallows before i lose all my light so on that note i appreciate the support and we'll see you next week [Music] [Music] my [Music] you

Channel: Jimmy Breitenstein

Views: 582

Rating: 4.9354839 out of 5

Keywords: Wildlife, Photography, Wildlife Photography Tips, Improve your photography, Wolf, Wolves, Photography tips, Photography tricks, Photography goals, Wildlife photography, Improve your chances, Explore, Adventure, How to improve your photography, Jimmy Breitenstein, Solo, Canon, Tamron, 1DX Mark II, R5, Vlog, Rode, Become a wildlife photographer, Bank Swallows, Birds, Bird photography

Id: 1pX2qjUIEZw

Length: 18min 40sec (1120 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 13 2021