Pierre Steenberg

The intimate landscape

May 17, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Many experts will tell you that the best views for landscape photography are wide views, therefore we should use wide-angle lenses for landscape photography. There is truth to their view but we should not limit ourselves to only one look. Once we have our wide shot (see last week's post on the Victoria Falls), why not slap on a longer lens and try...

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Atmosphere and mood

May 10, 2020 • Leave a Comment

The atmosphere and mood of an image can play an important part in photography. Some of the best atmospheric and moody images are taken when there is mist or fog. Let's look at an image of Victoria Falls, Zimbabwe. The mist is really important here as it adds to the mood of the image. It also helps the sun to give color to the image. Timing in th...

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Animal Portraits

May 03, 2020 • Leave a Comment

We take portraits of people so why can't we also take portraits of animals? I guess we can. What can we learn from taking portraits of people that can be applied to animal portraits? So what works for making good portrait images of people? Great composition Emotion Much of the success of awesome people's portraits are in the eyes Finding...

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Show life

April 26, 2020 • Leave a Comment

In wildlife photography it is important to showcase life, show life living, doing what wildlife does. This means that we need to show the animal doing something. I have said this before, images of animals just looking at you are generally boring. Watch the animals, observe their behavior. Show what they do. This image is so much more interesting t...

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Animal interaction

April 19, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Animals also have emotions. Dogs, for example, are happy to see you when you come home. They like interacting with you. Wildlife is no different. Elephants are said to mourn at the death of a family member. Gannets rejoice when their partner gets back to the nest. Animals interact with each other. They play. They cuddle. They fight. That is what we...

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Size and Proportions

April 12, 2020 • Leave a Comment

When different sizes and proportions are juxtaposed it creates contrast. This is when we see how large something really is and conversely, how small something really is. We only see this when something large is placed next to something small. One gives a sense of scale to the other and vice-versa. Such juxtapositions often leave the viewer with awe...

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Life and Death

April 05, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Nature is nature, a place where life and death battle each other every day. Capture it. Chronicle life. At times these scenes evoke questions such as what do you do when you catch more than you can chew? How is this bird going to swallow the catch? Let's look at an image. So how do we capture scenes like these? Today I am not going to talk about s...

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Capturing birds in flight

March 29, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Getting good pictures of birds in flight can be some of the most difficult types of photography you can do. The smaller the bird the more difficult to capture. They move very fast and can change direction quickly. Your autofocus has to be even faster to get these images sharp. It can take years of practice to perfect your technique. I suggest start...

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Intimacy in wildlife photography

March 22, 2020 • Leave a Comment

We often show animals in their environment and take landscape images of animals in the landscape. These images can be wonderful and I advocate composing images in this way. Then we zoom in a bit and show the animal in a way that has the animal fill the image. Zooming in, even more, we may take an animal portrait. But why stop there? There are many...

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Focus creates interest

March 15, 2020 • Leave a Comment

Firstly, I am not talking about focus, as in focusing the lens, here. I am talking about when animals focus in a special way. Animals just live their lives. They go about their business. Then there are times of special focus. Their behavior changes. All the attention is zoomed in on one thing, they have a clear and solitary focus. If you can captur...

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