A
Beginner's Guide to Wildlife and Nature Photography
Seeing
- How to Spot Wildlife
Here, I’ll
discuss two of the skills unique to wildlife photography. You need to
be able to see, and you need to not be seen. I speak both literally and
metaphorically. For though you can see already, some things in front of
your eyes are invisible, and it may be fine that an animal sees you so
long as it does not see you as a threat.
Where's the chipmunk?
Click image for full-size.
Your brain is
bombarded with four hundred billion (400,000,000,000) bits of
information from your senses every second - we are only consciously
aware of two thousand of them. So naturally, we miss a lot of what is
going on right around us. No problem for day-to-day life, but
it’s going to be frustrating when trying to locate a small,
well-camouflaged animal in a maze of shadows. If you’re like
most
people, when you look around you, you see one object, then another,
then another. Right now you see these words, but you probably
can’t see something just off to the side or above your
monitor
without consciously trying to. This is fine so long as we
don’t
need to find animals. This is why you must re-learn to see (as your
ancestors used to, and as you did as a young child).
In a moment, relax
your eyes, turn around, and face your room. Then stop looking at a
certain object! Attempt to see everything within one hundred-seventy
degrees of you all at the same time. At first, everything might appear
a little bit blurry or out of focus - don’t worry about this,
it
is natural and to be expected. With time, this effect will partly
diminish, and you’ll partly get used to it. Hold your hands
out
from your body so that your arms form a straight line, bring them both
forward very slightly, stop, and now see both hands at the same time
from your peripheral vision (try moving your fingers). If you can,
you’re doing it right, congratulations! You’ll also
know
when you get it right, because you’ll be a bit amazed at how
much
there is right around you, and because there is a sort of
‘popping’ effect like when you dawn 3-D glasses. If
you
don’t get it, just relax and try another time.
Spot the Deer! Click
image for
Full-Size. This is similar to what you'll see in (a certain type of)
the woods.
This is what I
have heard referred to as ‘soft-focus’, but I
imagine
it’s referred to as other things as well -perhaps
you’ve
heard of it in one form or another. As you’ve noticed,
everything
becomes visible at once, but you may be skeptical because of everything
being a little out of focus. Here’s the thing: with soft
focus,
any movement will suddenly pop right out at you as though
it’s
been lit up with a spotlight. The animals you want to take pictures of
tend to move, so with a bit of patience, they’ll just show
right
up, no matter what great camouflage they may have adapted. When looking
for animals, you can try spotting them however you feel comfortable,
but if you don’t succeed, please just try looking at the
field/forest/canopy with ‘soft focus’ for a little
bit, and
don’t be surprised when you find something. When using
‘soft focus’, don’t try looking for
anything in
particular -you might be out to find a red-tailed hawk, but my
experience has confirmed that you will have better luck just by
observing everything and looking for a nameless
‘anything’.
Not only will your odds of finding that hawk improve, but you may also
find another animal that you weren’t seeking, and thus would
not
have noticed otherwise. As you get more comfortable, you’ll
notice a lot of success using ‘soft focus’ all of
the time,
like when walking or eating lunch.
More than just
using this seeing technique, a few common-sense tips will greatly help:
If you’re on foot, walk softly and slowly. Focus on
what’s
around you, but don’t work at it - let everything just come
to
you. Don’t forget your other senses! Don’t be loud.
Stop
frequently to observe everything around you.
You now have an
advantage over the rest of the population at spotting animals; now, if
you don’t have a telephoto or the conditions to use it in,
you’ll have to get closer for that shot.
