This last weekend has been rather quiet from a wildlife photography point of view.
Even though we saw a few lions, elephants and rhino there was never a moment where I felt that ‘I need to grab my camera NOW’. All the subjects we sat watching, or followed around waiting for photo opportunities, just did not seem to work out. The light was wrong, the composition did not work or the inspiration of the moment was lacking. Every now and then there were flashes of a visual moments but then it was gone again. It is during times like this that you have to think and shoot slightly out of the box.
We were on our way to go and view and photograph some lions on a wildebeest kill when we stopped almost underneath a couple of White Backed Vultures waiting there turn. It was about 17h00 in the afternoon and the entire sky was covered with a thick blanket of white cloud. This normally makes bird photography a no go as the background just blows the image away completely. With not having had a lot of good photo ops I thought I might as well take a few moments to photograph the two avian scavengers.
My camera is normally on matrix metering, which means the camera averages out the various tones of the entire scene to calculate the exposure, but in this situation it would not have worked. It would have resulted in an image in which the white background was rendered as a light grey color and the birds would probably have been closer to a black silhouette. I quickly changed to spot metering which means I told the camera to use the middle 2% of the frame, in this case I aimed at the vulture on the right, to calculate the exposure. This worked well as the two vultures was exposed perfectly even though the sky is blown out slightly; a necessary compromise for this kind of image.
Metering, and exposing your images correctly, is one of the things that can lift your wildlife photography to the next level and it is definitely something worth exploring when you next head out into the field. If you find yourself in the position where you have a stationary subject try shooting it using the three different metering modes to see the results for yourself. Yeah, you can do all kinds of touch ups in Photoshop but that is not the point. The point is to try and get it right in the camera and then you we can start looking at exposure compensation but that is a story for a different post.
I have a hectic few days ahead so the posts might be shorter than usual but will make up for that next week when the world stops spinning around more than once a day.
More soon and remember to check your exposure! 
Gerry
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I know the feeling Gerry. We really had to work for some good shots the past week …..but great shot of the vultures. Have you tried that image in B/W I think it will look like its been shot in a studio with a white background and will add a bit of drama to the scene, let me know
cheers
Hi Grant,
Will play with B&W when I have a chance. Should be interesting as there is not too much color to drop yet the result might be quite different. Will keep you posted!
G