Wildlife photography is really difficult! Yes, anybody can take a nice-looking image of a static animal just looking at you. To get a great wildlife image is what is really hard. It takes boatloads full of patience, not the sit and wait kind of patience where you can relax and look around while you wait for the sun to get to a certain position. No, this kind of wait is taxing because you have the keep tracking the animal through your camera's viewfinder while you wait for that right moment, the right expression, or the right composition. Doing this with a long lens for long periods of time wears on you. It can get frustrating as you follow that monkey who does nothing while the others are displaying great action. Not a problem you think, just track the horsing around monkeys and photograph them. So you do, and as Murphy would have it, just then your original monkey does something awesome and you missed it. Or just at the right moment of action your animal walk in behind a tree and you miss it.

          Don't get discouraged. Just bring two boatloads full of patience and keep doing what you are doing. The key to great wildlife photography is to capture the right moment, that right expression, or that right composition. On our recent African Safari workshop, we were on photographic boats which make the task of tracking the animals with your heavy lens easy because the boat had professional gimbal supports built-in. Sometime before sunset we would search for elephants and position ourselves so that we are shooting into the setting sun. Here is that capture:

I really like this image. What makes it what it is, is also the composition. When do you take the shot? The elephant is constantly moving. You don't want the elephant to look to the right because then the viewer's gaze would also move to the right and leave the image. If I was lying I would tell you that I had to watch the elephant's movement closely and snap the image with him looking slightly to the left so that he and the sun complement each other. But that is not how you successfully get great wildlife images. So how do you get that right moment or right composition when photographing animals? Truth be told, things happen much too fast for you to snap at the right moment. So you shoot at the camera's fastest frame rate and pick the right image later. You shoot thousands of images and end up with just a few good ones. So the trick is not as much when you shoot, although you still do your best to frame it right, the trick is to select the right image out of the sequence. Pay attention to the composition and pick the image that works best as a whole. This requires even more patience because you are looking at sequences of 20 or 40 images of the same scene. Look at each one carefully because expressions, action, and composition can change with each image. Pick the best one.

          Gather all the patience you can find and go out and find some wildlife to photograph. By the way, if you would like to join us on our next African Safari workshop in 2021 please contact me.