Judging by the comments Mitchell Krog’s guest post yesterday was very well received.  Apart from truly amazing images Mitchell shares some amazing insights into his approach to wildlife photography – thanks Mitchell!  My original post today was going to be on mistakes, or missed shots, in wildlife photography and how to learn from them which picks up nicely on Mitchell’s post but just not enough time so will have it up early next week.  I will be going on leave for two weeks from next week Thursday so will be catching up on a lot of posts I have been wanting to put together but for now one last pic for the week.  Grin and bear it… Kinda how I feel today!

Gotta run so see ya all on Monday!  Have a good one.

Gerry

Wildlife photography is a whole lot more than simply clicking a shutter button, it’s about telling a story by capturing the character, expressions and very nature of an animal. If I can stir an emotion in the viewers of my images then I believe my job is done.

I have a few simple golden rules that I not only apply to my photography but also to my life as a whole.

- Patience is the key to obtaining anything you set your mind to.
- Persistence sure does pay off.
- Practice makes perfect.
- Never set yourself up for disappointment.
- Take what is given to you and be grateful for it.
- Make mistakes, lots of them, but better yet, learn from them.

If you’re not willing to be patient as a wildlife and nature photographer then you’re doubtfully ever going to succeed at it. Even if wildlife photography is merely a hobby for you, don’t you want to be the best you can be? Capturing those special moments in time does indeed require lots of patience, lots of mistakes and lots of failures. Many photographers may wait years or even a lifetime for that prize winning image but they wait.

There’s a lot to be said for planning but more often than not with wildlife photography you can plan as much as you like and still not achieve what you set out to do. After all it’s really up to nature to come up with the goods, you cannot force an animal to do anything. You simply have to be there, ready and waiting, camera in hand for when the moment does happen and believe me those moments happen when you least expect it. If you have a specific image in mind that you want to achieve, it could take you years of waiting for that moment to transpire but your patience and persistence will pay off one day.

But make no mistake, if you’re travelling halfway around the world to capture images of a rare and endangered species then for sure you have a lot of planning to do like obtaining permits, visas, flight tickets etc and also getting someone who knows the area to guide you in and out, but that’s only 50% of the job done, you may get there, spend weeks waiting and not capture a single image or even a glimpse of your subject or you may arrive to an entire trip that’s rained out. That’s the game unfortunately and it does carry with it its frustrations but if you simply give up when you don’t achieve something then how do you know that your next trip is not the one when it happens?

The more you practice your wildlife photography, the better you will get at it and if you’re not making mistakes you’re simply not trying hard enough. Only by making mistakes can you learn from them and be better prepared the next time something special happens. There’s no reason to beat yourself up about missing a special moment because you did not know your camera well enough or did not have the right lens. Instead accept the failure, learn from it and you’ll be better prepared the next time.

Beginners to wildlife photography can learn a lot in a short time by going on a photographic safari with a professional company who have guides and photographers who can advise you and teach you some of their tricks right there in the bush. You may only ever need to go on one or two photographic safaris and learn what you need but some people may need a lot more trips, it really depends on how quickly you learn but it’s a great starting point.

With today’s high speed cameras you’ll often be out in the bush with other photographers and when something happens you’ll hear those cameras rattling away like machine guns but that’s not always necessarily the best thing to do. I have high speed cameras and in the past I used to shoot like a tyrant at high frame rates and return home with thousands of very similar images to sort through but this merely makes the selection and deletion process that much harder. Instead I purposely slow down my shooting rate to capture less images but each one is quite different from the next and almost all are in perfect focus. By shooting slower it also forces you to think a little more about the image you are capturing, you look carefully at the composition, you look for potential obstructions or distractions in the image, you make sure you’re not doing silly things like cutting off the animals feet, you look for any potential faults in your image while you’re still there and not when you get home. Also by shooting slower you always know for a fact that you have space in your camera’s memory buffer for the next image, when everyone else around you has filled their buffers and are waiting anxiously to take their next shot, that’s quite often when something special happens and that will be your prize for shooting a bit slower.

Most of all have fun with your wildlife photography, it’s such a privilege to be able to live in South Africa and have access to so much wildlife photography opportunities so when you are in the bush enjoy every moment with and without the camera. When nature does choose to give you a special moment to capture on film, capture it, be thankful and enjoy the moment, you may never see that same thing ever again. If a camera is nowhere nearby, just enjoy the moment and take the memories home with the highest megapixel camera in existence, your human eye.

Mitchell Krog

Mithell’s Links:

• Website: The Living Canvas

Mitchell’s Biography:

During the last few years Mitchell has achieved much recognition with his images, he has had his works published in a number of publications locally and internationally and has received numerous awards and commendations for his images. Mitchell regularly contributes photography articles and images to photographic and lifestyle magazines as well as media outlets and various web sites. He has a strong background in environmental and conservation fields and this gives him a solid understanding and appreciation of the threatened ecosystems and environments which he so often has the privilege to photograph. He has a firm belief that it is difficult to save what cannot be seen and has often used his images for motivating environmental causes.

European Roller (Coracias garrulus)

Madikwe Game Reserve, 6 March 2010, 17h11

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 160mm, 1.2000, f/2,8, ISO 200

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Sometimes when you go on safari you will go hours without seeing one of the sought after photographic subjects.  The last few days has been a bit like that but during times like this you can always look out for and  photograph landscapes, macro images and birds.  Many people don’t even try to photograph birds because ‘I don’t have a good enough camera’ or ‘I don’t have a long enough lens’.  If you cannot make a good image with ‘basic’ camera equipment how do you plan to use the fancy lenses and things to do so?  Isn’t have the fun in photography to push your own visual and creative boundaries and see what images you can create regardless of your equipment?  I shot the above image at a focal length of  160mm which for bird photography is probably considered almost wide angle but it just shows that if you are patient and you keep your eyes open there really are wildlife images everywhere.  I guess the bottom line is that you should never stop looking for subjects or trying to capture those subjects when out in the field.  Regardless of what equipment you are shooting with!

Thursday is, always, guest blogger day on Photo-Africa and I am extremely pleased to have Mitchell Krog share his thoughts and ideas on nature photography with us tomorrow.  Mitchell will be discussing what he looks for in an image when he’s out there photographing nature and how he envisions bringing his views of nature to his audience.   In Mitchell’s own words “It’s a lot more more than clicking a shutter button, it’s about telling a story by capturing the character, expressions and nature of an animal and furthermore stirring an emotion in the viewers of my images. For me photography is an incredibly powerful medium because it allows me to show others how I see the world, not how they see it, and that to me is the most unique gift and not one I ever take for granted.“

During the last few years Mitchell has achieved much recognition in the last few years with his images, has had his works published in a number of publications locally and internationally and has received numerous awards for his images.  Mitchell also has a very strong background in environmental and conservation fields and this gives him a solid understanding and appreciation of the threatened ecosystems and environments which he so often has the priveledge to photograph. He has a firm belief that it is difficult to save what cannot be seen and has often used his images for motivating environmental causes.

Make sure to visit Photo-Africa tomorrow for Mitchell’s guest post.

I’ll see ya on Friday!

Gerry

Lion Feeding on Young Zebra

Madikwe Game Reserve, 26 February 2010, 17h19

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 200mm, 1/160, f/5.6, ISO 640

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If you have ever watched lions feeding you will know that it is a very clinical scene.  The lions go about finishing their meal in a very step-by-step fashion. I am not referring to the actual kill, like what Hilton Kotze described in his great guest post last week, but rather the large cats feeding on the carcass.  A few weeks ago we found a lioness and her two youngsters, around one year of age, in pretty thick bush.  We sat watching the lions moving around in the thickets for a while when one of the youngsters walked down a game path straight past out vehicle carrying the head of their unfortunate prey.

Considering that the lion in the image is only about a year old, you can see how tiny the zebra must have been.  Under normal circumstances most people who come on safari hope to see the actual kill but on this occasion it was pretty unanimous that no one would have liked to see the three lions take down this very young zebra.  I am not too fond of photographing and showing lions on a kill – personal preference – but up until the moment the young lion appeared out of the thickets we were not exactly sure what they were doing and as wildlife photographers we should try and capture every aspect of nature..  Difficult to watch and photograph but a natural part of life in Africa.   That moment, and this image, acts as a reminder that nature can be pretty cruel at times but that every animal has it’s place in the circle of life.  This image, simple as it may be, tells that story.

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

African Wild Dog

Madikwe Game Reserve, 27 Feb 2010, 06h29

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 200mm, 1/640, f/3.5, ISO 800

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Photographing one of Africa’s most endangered carnivores is definitely a highlight when visiting the Madikwe Game Reserve.  On this specific morning we had just left the lodge when a group of Wild Dogs burst out of the bushes and ran down the road straight towards the rising sun that had barely broken the horizon and apart from a soft golden glow, we did not have to much light to work with.  If you look closely you will see a very small bit of rim lighting around the ears of the three dogs.  Normally photographing Wild Dogs require quite a bit of attention to your metering and exposure settings as it is not all that easy to get the dark eyes to show up properly on the black face, something that can make or break your image, but the above image was a lot simpler.  As there were no harsh shadows and I did not have to worry about the eyes I simply used matrix metering, followed the dogs as they ran down the road and fired away.

With a number of workshops and photographic safaris in the pipeline, let me know if you would be keen to come to Madikwe to photograph the African Wild Dogs!

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry

Male Lion by Hein Welman

Black Backed Jackal by Hein Welman

To view more of or purchase any of Hein’s images click here.

More soon.

Gerry

As I sit here I don’t actually have a clue what to write about so let’s see how it goes.

Not sure if it is because there are too many thoughts and ideas I actually want to share or whether it is just on of those days.  The only thing I knew for sure was that I wanted to use the black and white image on the left in this post.  I photographed this lioness a few days ago during one of the most fantastic light-meets-lion moments I have had for a very long time.

Strangely enough this image stood out not because of the light on her, she was laying in full shade, but because of something else.  The look?  The lines?  The composition?  Not sure, but the moment I saw this image through the viewfinder and again later when I opened it on my Mac it jumped out at me.  It’s not one of those images that makes you go wow, like Hilton’s images from yesterday, but rather just a good, solid wildlife image.  To me there seems to be a sweetness about the lioness, an innocence.  Perhaps that, even more than the composition, is what drew my eye to this frame when I first saw it.

I have no doubt that as you spend more time in the field you will start seeing more and more of these kind of images.  You will see them as you look at your subjects and you will recognize them in an instant as you see your image take shape through your camera’s viewfinder.  Other than hours and hours or practice, the other way in which you can get better at ’seeing’ images around you is to shoot, and share, with other photographers.

The sharing is the important thing though.  Showing someone the image you just took and telling them what you were thinking or going for when you depressed the shutter is a great way to organize your creative thoughts and make them real.  The more you do this, the more insight and vision you will have when you look through the viewfinder again.

Looking at other photographer’s images out in the field will also, if you are open to it, act as inspiration.  You will get new ideas with regards to angles, composition or the use of light.  Sharing and discussing your thoughts is what cements all of the learning process together and the final result?  You grow as a wildlife photographer.

Ultimately, and perhaps this is one of the stages Hilton mentioned yesterday, we move past trying to create wildlife images but rather try and express our  own personal vision.  Show your viewers what you see when you look at a scene.  Look for emotion in your subjects.  Look for moments.  This kind of growth is essential for your longevity as a wildlife photographer.

Quite a mouthful for someone who had no idea what to write about!  Anyway, on most Fridays I upload a slideshow with a few images from the last week but today I am going to have a quick look at the five new slideshow images I have chosen for March with a few thoughts on each.

The last few weeks have been amazing for lion sightings and this little guy and his four siblings stole the show each time.  When I was looking for images for the slideshow on the top of the blog I had to look for something that would work as a long landscape images.  That normally means fill the frame completely or leave plenty of negative space.  In this case the empty space on the right of the frame has been left open to ask the question “who or what is the little guy snarling at?”  If your images can ask questions then you are on the right track.

As with the lioness on the top of the post, this was another one of those moments that I saw through the viewfinder.  I shot three shots in this series, with this being the first.  Love the open ears and leading line taht gets created by the ellies trunk.  Great animals to watch and photograph.

For the last few weeks I have been shooting almost exclusively with my Nikon 80-200mm f2/8.  We were lucky enough to find this raptor sitting on a dead tree right next to the road which made for quite a nice photo opportunity even though it was quite gloomy – that is where the f/2.8 came in handy.  As you can see the sky was completely gray and overcast so I spot metered of the bird’s chest and fired away.  Neat and clean image which leaves all the focus completely on the bird  even though blue sky would have been nice.

A week or so ago I had an off evening so I joined Grant Marcus for an afternoon game drive.  Was great to be able to just sit back, look around and shoot whatever I wanted.  Great fun and a magical sunset.

This is a shot I have been trying for a while.  I am sure that every single person who has even photographed a zebra must have tried something like this but I still like the simplicity of it and even though I like this one I will keep on trying.

If you are looking for a quick and inspirational read this weekend, make sure to head over to Craft and Vision where you can pick up Dave Delnea’s latest e-book ‘Below the Horizon – Understanding Light at the Edges of Day’.  For $5 it is an absolute steal and even though, at Dave’s own admission, there are no mind blowing secrets in the book you will find great advise, guidelines and image of how to shoot before sunrise and after sunset.  Yeah, this is the realm of long exposures, early mornings and late evenings.  Awesome inspiration.  While you are on the site you might as will pick up a few of David duChemin’s e-books.  Probably the best photographic e-books available today!

After reading Below the Horizon, I headed out to give the long exposure thing a bash.  Have not done anything like that for a very long time but along with Gavin Tonkinson, had a great time.  We played with tripods, remote controls and neutral density filters and as mentioned earlier, it is the best way to learn. Shot a good couple of frames and even though the results were ok, I will be doing a lot more of this in future.  Here is one of the images I shot after sunset.

This was a four second exposure which shows the view towards the west of the Madikwe Game Reserve.  The reflection in the vehicle windscreen is my attempt at being creative and in the distance you can see the light of Botswana’s capital, Gaborone.  Very different to what I normally shoot but a great exercise in long exposures.  Will hopefully be posting more of these in future.  Good fun.

Before I let you go for the weekend, one last wildlife photograph that I shot the same afternoon as image of the lioness at the top of the post.

Beautiful light, awesome action and another fantastic African moment!

Have a great weekend!  See ya on Monday!

Gerry

I think as  wildlife photographers  or serious enthusiasts we all go through different stages of our wildlife photography .

I would like to talk about  one in particular , one that  we all go through at some stage ,and one that is  extremely irritating to all field guides .It is a stage that propels us and drives us to go back to the African bush again and again until we get that shot. There is an indescribable force that drives us to  spend thousands of rands, that we don’t have, in our quest to  capture the ultimate wildlife shot (or what may seem to be the ultimate shot).  That shot is… THE KILL .

Every wildlife photographer at some stage wants to shoot “the kill” , the actual hit or knock,  as  the lion, leopard or cheetah connects with its prey and the dust flies and teeth and claws rip and the bellow or bleat of the prey is heard for a split second.

There is an art to capturing this shot,  This shot inevitably does not pay the bills but it gives a tremendous  sense of personal achievement  that is very hard to describe or match.

It all starts once the photography bug has bitten. The symptoms are very clear,…..you spend  money you don’t have on a decent camera and a serious lens , ( anything from a 70-200 to a 500 or 600 f4), you have read some wildlife photography books, maybe attended a course or too , you successfully capture the glint in the eye and  you receive some wows , well done  and fantastic comments on ODP.

At this point  you  have mastered the art of basic wildlife photography, but there is this inner drive ,urge call it what you want but it drives you to want to capture that ultimate shot.  All you want now is the hairy scary animals, the  lions and leopards,  and I am ashamed to even say it but you hardly  even lift your camera for impalas and the like at this stage.

It’s a dangerous stage to be in as you loose focus on what photography is all about Thank goodness it’s only a stage and you soon realize that there is more to photography than just shooting the action , the smaller things and beautiful things also count and make good photos too. However its like growing up…. you can’t run if you did not first walk and you can’t walk if you did not crawl.

So to help you through this painful stage here are some tips that might help to capture images like below.

Remember:

• Be prepared to spend a lot of time in the bush (it took me 5 years of going to the bush at least once a moth for 3-4 days to see my first kill)
• Have patience to follow a specific pride or predator for long periods (this can get boring at times)
• Spend time in the same area , lots of time  to get to know the pride and pride dynamics , where they hunt , what water sources they frequent and what species they like  to hunt. Its true that some prides specialise in a specific animal species , they will go for anything if hungry but they do have their favourites. A few years ago the jacaranda pride in the Timbavati specialised in giraffe and took down 18 in one year.
• Very important get to know animal behaviour (if you don’t you should have a guide that does ) you will miss the moment if you are not tuned in to what’s happening  Field guides like Gerry, Marius Coetzee, Chad Cocking and many more , can’t name them all , have great animal behaviour knowledge as they work and see things unfolding before their eyes every day.
• Get your camera setting right before the action goes down.  Set your camera before or when you enter the sighting.
• Stay calm when the action goes down – it happens so fast , at first you don’t know were to point your camera, there is such an adrenaline rush that you can’t think straight, your heart is pumping in over dive mode, you push the wrong buttons on the camera or you  forget to even push the trigger . I have to laugh at myself when I think back of how many kills I messed up because of the excitement and adrenaline rush.
• Practice, practice and practice, and lots of luck ,the only snag is these situations don’t exactly present themselves on every game drive , so cherish them when they do come along once or twice a year. If you are lucky (like the field guides) you may see more but two to three a year is good. Once a gain all relative to the time you spend in the bush.

Once you have been fortunate enough to capture some kills you move on in you quest to acquire awesome images and every time you are presented with the opportunity to shoot a kill you do appreciate it immensely but your day is not spoiled if you don’t get it.

I hope in  some small way I have been able to shed some light on capturing that special moment.

Thanks and happy shooting.

Hilton Kotze

Hilton’s Links:

• Photographic Safaris: Digital-Africa
• ODP Safaris: Book a Safari
• Blog: Hilton Kotze’s Blog
• Facebook: Hilton’s Facebook Page
• Email: Send Hilton an Email

Dancing Scrub Hare

Madikwe Game Reserve

Nikon D300, Nikon 80-200 @ 200mm, 1/320, f/3.5, ISO 800

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Scrub Hare, being mostly nocturnal, is one of the animals that most of us do not normally get a chance to photograph.  A few days ago we were on our way back to the lodge when we found this little guy feeding on the side of the road.  The sun was just about to drop below the horizon which did not leave to much light to work with but we decided to give it a bash anyway.  The next moment the Scrub Hare started bouncing all over the place.  Literally!  He was running up and down the road, bouncing and doing what looked like very bad attempts at back flips.  The only explanation for this strangely energetic behavior is that insects of some sort must have been biting him as in between his aerial antics he also threw himself on the floor, rolling furiously in the dust.  With fading light and a very fast moving subject  we had to push up our ISO a bit to get a fast enough shutter speed with which to freeze the bouncy bunny, or at least just his face.  We managed to get some great shots when he was moving side to side but when he ran up and down the roads, towards and away from us, he was just to fast for any of us to get a crisp shot.   A photographic safari never ceases to surprise as even though earlier that day we photographed elephants, a pride of lions and some amazing landscapes, this was the photographic highlight of the day!

With tomorrow being Thursday it is guest blogger day.  The good news is that you won’t have to read another guest post by me and the better news is that Hilton Kotze will be tomorrows guest author on Photo-Africa.  Hilton is a wildlife and sport photographer who also does some travel and landscape photography in between.  Hilton has numerous photographic accolades to his name which includes the title of Getaway Fujifilm Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2007.  Also looking at shooting fast moving subjects, make sure to check out ‘Capturing the Moment’ tomorrow.  Fast moving subjects, great action and getting the ultimate action shot on safari.

I will be back on Friday and remember that when you are out on safari to not ignore the small things!

There are images everywhere!

Gerry

For me, one of the most important skills any aspiring wildlife photographer should learn is the understanding and control of the depth of field (DOF) in their images.  The ability to isolate your subject from it’s background or making sure your subject’s eyes are tack sharp and in focus is vital if your goal is to create striking wildlife images.  If you have spent a bit of time out in the field I have no doubt that you have taken images which looked great on the camera’s LCD but when you opened then on your PC you saw that for some reason the images just did not work.

A lot of the time this is because you did not pay enough attention to the aperture you were shooting at or your focal point was slightly wrong.  It has been said many many times before but to create effective images, wildlife or otherwise, you need to make sure that your subject’s eyes are in focus.  Today’s modern cameras give you up to 51 points which you can use to make sure that you hit the spot when choosing your focus points.  This is all fine and well but the margin for error, or slightly out of focus eyes on your subject, could be as small as a few centimeter.

For the purposes of looking at how your aperture and distance from your subject can influence your wildlife images let’s use the following lion image.

I took the above image a few weeks ago.  We sat about 11 meters (that’s important) from the big male lion which gave us ample opportunity to use and try different settings.

Trying to create sharp and in focus images is always something that we should aim for and this image was no exception.  The other main goal, when shooting this image, was to throw the background out of focus to keep all the attention centered on the lion’s face.  Now the catch here was, and this is the purpose of this post, to make sure that I got the lion’s entire face in focus from tip of nose all the way to the mane while at the same time throwing out the background.

Step one was to make sure that I focus on the lion’s eyes, as can by the focus point in the image on the right, but then came the important part.  I needed to choose an aperture that gives me a large enough, but not too large, DOF.  I ended up using the following settings for the above image:

• Shooting Mode:  Aperture Priority
• Aperture:  f/4.0
• Shutter Speed: 1/650
• Focal Length: 185mm
• ISO: 400
• Distance to Subject: +/- 11 meters

Before I carry on let’s juts make sure we are on the same page by looking at what all the important terms, for the purposes of this post, means.

• Aperture: This refers to the opening on the front of your lens that let’s light in.  The aperture gets measured in f-stops which can range from f/1.2, which refers to a very large opening of the lens letting in a lot of light, to f/32, which refers to a very small opening of the lens letting very little light in.  From an exposure point of view it is important to remember that the larger your aperture (expressed by a small number) the faster shutter speed you will be able to use and vice versa.
• Depth of Field:  DOF refers to the areas of your images that will be rendered sharp.  I.e. different parts of the image will be at different distances from the camera and each of these will be rendered sharp, or not, depending on the  depth of field.  DOF can be controlled by changing the aperture.  Using a small aperture (large f-stop) will result in an image where a large part of the image is in focus and using a large aperture (small number) will result in a small area of the focus being in focus.
• Focus Point: This is the exact point where you focus the camera such as the animal’s eyes.

As we were photographing this big male lion in the Madikwe Game Reserve he was kind enough to turn his head to the side which allowed me to get the shot on the right which can help in explaining how changing your aperture or distance to your subject can influence the DOF and therefore the ultimate look and feel of your images.

Now without getting to caught up in the exact details, such as how far a lion’s nose is away form it’s eyes, I uses a fantastic iPhone application to put together the following examples. PhotoBuddy allows you to enter your aperture, focal length and distance from subject and it then gives you the focal range and other useful info.  Yes yes I know that most of the time you are not going to have time to do all of that when you are out in the field but once you understand how all of this works, and with enough practice, you will start getting a feel for it and you will no doubt start creating stronger images.

Another option is to download a DOF chart which you can print and keep in your camera bag for quick reference.  If you use Google you will find many different ones but to start with you can find a nice one at DOF Master.

With all of that said, here are three examples of how you can change the DOF in your wildlife images.  For the purposes of this exercise, imagine you are shooting the lion from the right of the frame to get an image like the one at the top of this post.  Based on the variable you will see the DOF, or area which will be rendered sharp and in focus, in the red shaded area.  Here goes…

Example 1

Getting the eyes sharp is everything.  You can see that at a distance of 11 meters an aperture of f/2.8 will render the lion sharp from the tip of his nose to the top of his head.  Anything further than the top of the head and closer to you than the tip of the nose will progressively be more and more out of focus.  In a scenario like this you have a little bit of leeway in that even if the lion moved a little you will still be able to render the eyes sharp.

Example 2

In this example the aperture has been kept the same but the distance to the lion has been decreased to 6 meters.  You can see, from the red shaded area, that the DOF is much narrower leaving a lot less room for error when trying to get the eyes sharp.  In this image you will end up with the eyes sharp but the tip of the nose will be a little out of focus.  This is neither right or wrong and depends completely what your creative goal is with the image.  It is important to note that if the lion was to lift his head a little as you shoot the image your camera might lock on to the nose leaving that pin sharp but the eyes will then be thrown out of focus.

Example 3

It has always been said that f/8.0 is a good aperture to start from and here you can see why.  Compare the DOF of this image to that of the first example.  You will see that the DOF here offers you quite a bit of room for error meaning that even if you did not hit your focus point, the eyes, you will still end up with an image where almost the entire head, including the eyes, will be in focus.  This is a safe way to shoot, especially if you are trying to keep track of a fast moving subject who, if they were to move away from or towards you, will move out of your chosen DOF.  On the flip side, it will leave an image which, when compared to an image with a very shallow DOF, will not pop as much and keep the focus completely on your subject.

Make sense?  The smallest change can make a huge difference to your resulting images.  By paying attention to, understanding and using aperture creatively when photographing wildlife you are well on your way to creating better, stronger image.

A few points to remember:

• Large aperture = small number = shallow DOF
• Small aperture = large number = large DOF
• Small distance to your subject = shallow DOF (that’s why getting pin sharp macro images is quite a challenge)
• Large distance to your subject = large DOF
• Your chosen DOF works both away from and closer to you from you focus point.
• In wildlife photography you subject might move at any time so a shallow DOF is risky but can result in amazing images

Understanding DOF, and applying it to your wildlife images, is one of the most creative tools you have to make a profound differences to your images.  Check it, understand it, use it!  Next time you are lining up a shot and you have your focus locked on your subject, take a second and think what difference changing your aperture can make.

If you have any further questions or comments don’t hesitate!

See ya tomorrow!

Gerry