Here is a link list to all twelve steps in the 12 steps to better nature photography series.  If you are reading the series for the first time, or looking to refresh your memory about a certain step, I hope you find the information useful.

Step #1 – Know your equipment

Step #2 – It is about the light

Step #3 – Use a tripod

Step #4 – Lens do more then get you closer

Step #5 – Get closer

Step #6 – Composition is not a four letter word

Step #7 – Go where the wildlife is

Step #8 – Move beyond the pretty picture

Step #9 – Learn biology

Step #10 – Be ready for the action

Step #11 – Learn to use the digital darkroom

Step #12 – Edit, share, and compare

Know a tip that is missing from the list, share it with the community by posting a comment.

Welcome to the twelfth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #12 – Edit, Share, and Compare.

For most of us, photography is a social activity.  I might be alone when I take an animal’s picture, but I’m not taking that picture just for me.  I photograph wildlife because I want to share the beauty and wonder of the natural world.  There are few things more exciting than coming face to face with a wild animal and interacting with it on a personal level.  I take photographs because I want to share those experiences.  It doesn’t matter how good of a photographer I am or how many great images I have captured.  If my images never move beyond my computer it is as if they don’t exist.

Editing:

Before you show a single image to anyone, edit your work.  After two weeks of photographing in Africa, I usually come home with between 5,000 and 10,000 images.  From these I narrow the number down to the best 100 images.  Sounds hard, but it isn’t.  The key is to accept that everyone takes bad pictures.  The difference between bad and good photographers is the ability to let go of the bad images and only show the good ones.  There is a running joke that the difference between a professional and amateur photographer is the size of their trash can.  The professional’s trash can is bigger and it gets used a lot.

When I edit my work, I do a first run through and throw away any images that don’t make a basic quality cut.  Anything that is out of focus, poorly exposed, or shows bad composition gets tossed.  After 19 years I still get shots of tail feathers as the bird flies out of the frame.  It doesn’t matter how good you are.  If you never take a bad picture, you’re not pushing yourself and you will never get better.

Once the obviously bad images are removed, I start the second round edit.  This is where I separate the wheat from the chaff.  Factors like composition, critical focus, and light all come into play in deciding which images stand out.  I also look at each image at 100% magnification to assess critical focus.  If the eyes aren’t sharp – delete.  It is painful, but I only want the best images in my files.

In the end, I end up with two different groups of “keeper” files.  The first is my top image category.  These are my babies.  These are my go to images when someone wants to see what I can do.  From a big trip, I might have 80 – 100 images in this category, but they are my best.  The second group is my good but not awesome category.  These are still high quality images (mediocre and bad images got thrown out during editing), but they are a notch below the top shots.  They also might number between 2,000 and 3,000.  Why do I keep these?  As a stock and editorial photographer, I often have a need for images that help to tell or complete a story.  These images help to fill out the story.  They might not be show stoppers, but they are solid images that show subjects that are often in demand.

Sharing:

Before you start sharing, you need to determin which images are worth sharing.  Not just which images, but how many.  We all dread the words, “Want to see a slideshow of my vacation?”  What usually follows is hundreds of boring images that make you want to move to a distant land where they have never heard of slideshows.  Don’t be that person.  If you give a slideshow, blow the audience away.  Make them beg for more.  Remember, 20 pictures of you sitting on a beach might bring back great memories, but they will end your future chances of a social life.  Do your audience a favor, keep it short.  If you can’t say it with 30 to 40 images, you need to refine your message.

It goes back to editing.  Not only do you need to select quality images, but the image you pick need to be assembled so they tell a story.  Not just any story.  It needs to be a story that your audience actually wants to hear.

In today’s digital world, image sharing has come a long way from the slideshow.  Online photographic sites like NatureScapes, BirdPhotographers.net, and Flickr offer opportunities to post images for review and critique.  Short of a photographic workshop, online communities are probably the fastest way to become a better photographer.  Pick your specialty, find a group, sign up, start posting, and listen to what people have to say.  For those looking for a more personal touch, there are many local area camera clubs that run monthly competitions and workshops.  These can also be outstanding venues for photographers looking to share their work and improve on what they are doing.

Beyond showing off, sharing my photography gets me excited about what I do.  As a wildlife photographer it is easy to be isolated.  Sharing my work gets what I am doing out in front of others and reaffirms the value of what I am doing.  In the case of my students, it has the added benefit of getting them excited about something I am passionate about.

Compare:

One of the best ways to develop as a photographer is to expose yourself to the work of other photographers.  Check out what others are doing and compare it to your own work.  How do your images measure up?  Are your images better?  If so, fantastic.  Now go out and find a photographer who is better then you.  Trust me, they are out there.  If not, don’t get depressed.  Every industry has its stars and there is nothing wrong with looking at their work with envy.  The problem comes when that is all you do.

When you find a photographer whose work you truly admire, ask yourself what it is about the work that draws you.  Is it their use of light?  Their unique camera angles?  Their post processing technique?  Once you identify the key factor (or factors), ask yourself what it will take for you to start producing images of that quality.  Then get to work.

Too often photographers obtain a basic level of competence in their craft and then stop developing.  Comparing your work to that of other photographers and pushing yourself outside of your comfort zone will assist you in evolving yours photography.

Welcome to the eleventh in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #11 – Learn to use the digital darkroom.

Back in the days of film, photography was simpler.  Not easier, simpler.  When I went to Africa, I shot to my hearts delight.  Find the subject, point the camera, take the picture, move on.  When I got home, the first thing I did was take all my film and ship it off to the photo lab where they would do all the processing.  Digital has changed that.  I am no longer dependent on the lab to process my images.  Now I am the lab.  So are you.  As digital photographers we have total control over our final images.  This is empowering, but it also presents a challenge.

We have to deal with the fact that no one else is going to do our processing for us.  For better or for worse, we are in complete control of your images.  When they look great, we get the credit.  When they look bad, we still get the credit.  Let me let you in on a little secret.  Every single digital image you take needs some adjustment in the digital darkroom.  Now I’m not talking about complex adjustments like removing distracting branches or ex-boyfriends.  I’m talking about image optimization.  The little adjustments to color and contrast that make the image pop.  Cameras do not record reality nor do they put a personal style into the image.  For that, photographers need postproduction.  This means becoming comfortable in the digital darkroom.  You don’t have to be a master of Photoshop, but you do need to pick an image editing program and learn how to use it.  Photoshop elements, iPhoto, Lightroom, Aperture, and GIMP are all good programs.

Take a look at each of the animated images below (watch each of them for a few seconds and they will change).  Each image shows a before and after version of the scene.  First is the camera’s unaltered original RAW capture.  The second versions shows what 10-20 seconds worth of work in Lightroom can do to an image.  I think you will agree that the second image is better.

This Tawny Eagle was moving up and down the tree branch trying to get into a cavity nest for dinner.  The lighting was difficult and there was no way to reposition where we could shooting from.  The camera recorded the scene as a partial silhouette.  Using the digital darkroom (Lightroom) I was able to bring out the colors of the image in a way that more accurately represented what my eye saw.  It also transforms a shot that should be thrown away into a unique behavioral image that is worth keeping.

The opportunity to photograph this candle at twilight presented itself as I was walking back to my safari tent.  The composition was done in camera, but Lightroom let me alter the white balance setting of the RAW file to enhance the blue colors of twilight.

Backlit images are difficult to expose, especially when you want to keep the detail in both the subject and the background.  Using Lightroom I was able to adjust the exposure settings and pull detail out of both the river and the elephant, making for a much more pleasing image.

This image was “exposed to the right”, an exposure technique used to pull as much detail as possible from the digital sensor.  When opening the image in Lightroom, the image appears overexposed.  By playing with the exposure settings, extra detail can be pulled out, especially in the white sky.

Leopards have a bad habit of spending their time in the shade.  I am sure it helps to escape the heat, but it sure can be frustrating when it comes to photography.  After capturing the image, the shadows were lightened, which brought the color and detail back to the subject.

I want to offer a warning before you jump into the digital darkroom.  You will probably spend more time in front of your computer then you do in the field.  By becoming the lab, we have exchanged time for image control, so be prepared to spend a lot more time in front of the computer.

Welcome to the tenth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #10 – Be ready for the action.

As much as we might wish things were different, wildlife doesn’t wait.  If you are not ready when the action starts, you miss it.  A lion’s snarl lasts less then a second.  Would you get the shot?  Here are a few tips wildlife photographers can use to improve their chances.

First, know your equipment.  Every second you spend fiddling with your equipment is a missed photo opportunity.  Mastering your equipment takes time, but the payoff is well worth the effort.

Second, get setup ahead of time.  Don’t wait until you find a subject before getting ready.  When I am looking for subjects I have my camera out and ready to shoot.  I don’t want to waste time pulling the camera out of a bag.  I also preset the exposure based on the current light conditions.  If a opportunity presents itself, I want to start shooting immediately, not mess around with exposure.

Third, learn the value of patience.  Wildlife spends most of its time doing boring things.  If you want your shots to go beyond the ordinary, you need to wait for those rare behaviors to occur.  Fights and interactions are more photogenic then grazing or sleeping.  The downside, of course, is that such behaviors are rare and often end before you have a chance to point your camera in the right direction.  If you want to photograph action, you have to have the patience to wait for it and be ready when it happens.

Fourth, learn all you can about animal behavior.  I have said it before and I am sure I will say it again, knowing animal behavior is the single best way to be ready for the action.  Understanding what is happening greatly improves your chances of predicting what will happen next.  More importantly, it will improve your chances of being in the right place at the right time.

During the mating season, male zebra are some of the meanest, nastiest animals on the planet.  They fight constantly.  This behavior creates some wonderful photo opportunities, but the challenge is making sure you are ready when the action happens.  The kick recorded above took less then a second from start to finish.  While some luck was involved (I had my camera pointed in the right direction), I improved my odds by having everything set up ahead of time.  All I needed to do when the actions started was to focus and shoot.

The Mara River in northern Tanzania is home to thousands of hippos.  From any overlook it is possible to see hundreds of these massive animals wallowing in the water.  On occasion, brief fights break out.  It is impossible to predict where the fights will happen (whatever starts them happens underwater), but if you react fast enough you can capture the action before it ends.  In this case I was sitting on an overlook along the northern edge of the river.  I held my 500mm lens in my hands (one of the few times I have used it without either a tripod or a beanbag) and I waited.  By constantly scanning the herd and using my ears (fights are noisy), I was able to react fast enough to capture several fights.  The above images is one of my most successful results.

Sometimes the action is not high speed, just brief.  These two young cheetah (probably brothers) were resting within sight of our vehicle for over an hour.  Every five to ten minutes they would shift around, alternating between sitting up and lying down.  The image I wanted to capture was with both of them sitting up and looking at each other.  It took over half an hour before all the elements came together.  Then, for less the a second, it happened.  Out of a group of 15 photographers, I was the only one who got this shot.  By knowing what I wanted and being willing to sit and wait until it happened, I got the shot (and no, it is not photoshopped).

Vervet monkeys are fast.  When they start to move you don’t have time to change the camera settings.  This image was as much luck and anything, but it shows the value of having the camera settings established before you find your subject.

Leopard sightings are always a reason for excitement.  Most of the time, however, the photographer is treated to a large cat sleeping in a tree.  Not the most exciting subject.  For those willing to wait, opportunities present themselves.  After waiting for over an hour (yes, I said an hour!) we were treated to the sight of this leopard sitting up, yawning, climbing down the tree, and walking along the road.  Those who were not willing to wait missed the rare opportunity to photograph a leopard while it was up and about.

Welcome to the eighth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #8 – Move beyond the pretty image.

Nature photography is full of pretty images.  Everywhere you look you see beautiful scenery, stunning plumage, and colorful sunsets.  Pretty images are the norm and if you want you images to stand out, they need to move beyond the pretty picture.

Charles Glatzer (better known as Chas), a good friend and outstanding wildlife photographer once gave me a tip that changed my approach to photographing wildlife.  His tip was simple.  When photographing a subject, there are four specific images you want to capture as soon as possible.  There images are: a horizontal image showing the animal in its habitat, a vertical image showing the animal in its habitat, a horizontal closeup image of the animal, and a vertical closeup image of the animal.  These are the four basic images that you should try to capture with each subject.  They should be technically perfect and show the subject in all of its glory.

Yet, many photographers stop there.  Those first four picture make up the pretty pictures we are use to seeing.  Too often, photographers spend all of their time with a subject recreating the same four basic shots.  Chas’s advise is not to gab your four images and then pack your bags.  After the four primary images have been captured, it is time to think outside the box and try to create something unique.  Yes, you will fail.  Many of your images will be awful and your finger will get lots of exercise pressing the delete key, yet every now and then the magic happens and a truly stunning image is created.  With that in mind, here are a few suggestions about how one can move beyond the pretty picture.

Creative Angles – Play around with photographing the subject from a unique angle.  Ask yourself how people usually see the subject and then do the opposite.  Flowers are usually seen from eye level.  Try looking up at them, or photograph them from a bird’s eye view.

Animalscapes – Show animals as part of the environment.  As the photographer, we know what the habitat was like when we captured the subject, yet we often forget that the viewer has no idea what the area outside the frame looks like.  Give them a sense of place, a context around which to understand the subject.  This is often difficult to do.  Including the habitat means more elements in the image so there are more things that can go wrong.

Pieces – Don’t show the entire subject, only include small pieces.  This works best with clearly recognizable features of the animal, but it can also be used as a kind of mystery effect where the viewer is challenged with trying to identify what the subject is.

Relationships – Some of the most powerful images show interactions between two or more subjects.  A mother feeding her young, a male lion with his pride, and a group of wide eyes babies huddled together all have the potential of pulling at the heart strings and showing us a rarely seen moment.

Interactions – Similar to relationships, interactions permit us access to experiences we rarely see.

Artistic – This is where we move beyond the subject and capture the image for its artistic elements.

Welcome to the seventh in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #7 – Go where the wildlife is.

There is a prevalent myth out there about how wildlife photographers work.  The myth goes something like this.  The photographer received a high paying assignment to go photograph a rare species.  Once the commission has been obtained, the photographer ships off for some remote corner of the world where he spends months sitting in the bush hoping to capture a brief glimpse of the species on film.  Let me tell you, if that is how it worked, there won’t be very many wildlife photographers.

Wildlife photographers get good pictures because they visit placed where the wildlife is both abundant and tolerant of humans.  With a little research (thank you Google), it is possible to find photographic hot spots for almost any species.  Sure, I can find Egrets and Herons here in Texas, but I will spend most of my time chasing birds that as wary of humans and do not permit close approach.  In terms of photographic opportunity, however, my time would be much better spent in Florida where I can access the same species which are both abundant and ridiculously tame (a four foot approach doesn’t phase them).

Want to photography Snow Geese or Sandhill Cranes?  Head to Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge in New Mexico between November and January.

Want brown bears?  Katmai National Park in Alaska during the salmon run is the place to be.

Migrating songbirds?  High Island, Texas in April and hope for a storm while you are there.

Wildflowers?  Texas hill country in April.

Nature rarely offers itself fully at first sight.  Only by working the subject, waiting for the light, and testing the possibilities can photographers consistently produce high quality images.  This can’t be done when you only capture a brief glimpse of the subject.  If you want to improve as a photographers, you need to take pictures.  To do that you need subjects and your chances of finding those subjects greatly improve if you find out where locating the wildlife and obtaining easy access is not a major obstacle.

The image of the Northern Gannett rookery was captured at Cape St. Mary in NewFoundland, Canada.  This is one of the best places in the world to reliably see and photography the Northern Gannett, with over 60,000 breeding pairs on location.  The image was taken using a Canon 1D mark 2, 500 IS lens, at 200 ISO.  The camera was supported using a Gitzo tripod and a Wimberly tripod head.

Welcome to the sixth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #6 – Composition is not a four letter word.

Why do so many new artists (photographers included) fear rules?  There seems to be this idea that rules should apply to everyone else, but are not worth of our personal attention.  Lets be clear here, when it comes to composition, there are no rules.  If you do your own thing, no one is going to break down your door late at night and take you away.  To paraphrase Captain Barbossa, “the rules are more like guidelines.”

The rules of composition are well established for a simple reason.  They work!  The idea behind composition is twofold: (1) place elements in the frame so they are visually pleasing and (2) use elements of the frame to draw the eye to where you want it to go.  I assure you, you are not the first person to try to create pleasing images.  Artists have dedicated their lives to solving these challenges.  Their results are the ideas that make up what we now call the rules of composition.

Here is a partial list of the elements of composition and articles covering each in detail.

• The rule of thirds
• Lines
• Picking the subject
• Placing the horizon
• Centering the subject
• Space in the frame
• Angle of view
• Backgrounds
• Relationships
• Horizontal vs. vertical
• Be different
• Repeating patterns
• Cropping

Next time you are out in the field, don’t recreate the wheel.  Use the rules of composition for maximum effect.

Welcome to the fifth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #5 – Get closer.

One of the biggest problems photographers have is trying to include too much in an image.  Including too much information in your images is the photographic equivalent of trying to hold an intimate conversation at a rock concert.  We live with distractions all around us.  Over time, we get better at focusing our attention and ignoring distractions.  Hardly a day goes by that I don’t have music playing in the background while I work, yet I would have a difficult time telling you what song was on.  Unfortunately the camera never met a distraction it didn’t like.  It is not selective and is overly inclusive.  As photographers it is our job to organize the visual chaos that makes up the scene into a pleasing whole.  One of the best ways to eliminate the clutter is to get closer.

When photographing a subject, ask yourself what the picture is about?  Try to answer with the fewest words possible.  ”Elephant” is a clearer answer then “an elephant walking across the African savanna while taking in the scenery of the African bush as it searches for other animals.”  Once you have figured out what the picture is about, eliminate everything else.  If the image is about an elephant, don’t include a mountain.  If you can’t decide on one key element, take multiple pictures, each with their own point of focus.

Getting closer, either physically or optically, is an easy way to eliminate the distractions.  By making the subject large in the frame, it increases in importance.  Large subjects demand the viewer’s attention.  As a photographer, that is what you want.

The image of the elephant was captured in the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania.  The image was captured using a Canon 1D mark 4, 500mm IS lens, at 400 ISO.  The image was taken from a vehicle and the camera and lens were supported using a beanbag.

Welcome to the fourth in a 12 part series about how to improve your nature photography.

Step #4 – Lens do more then get you closer.

From super wide angles to extreme telephotos, lens are a big part of photography.  Every photographer experiences lens lust at some time; the idea that our photographs would be better if we only had a new lens.  Yet many photographers fail to use their lenses effectively.  Take your average photographic situation and think about which lens you would like to use.  Your answer probably depends on how close you are and how big you want the subject to be.  If you wish you were closer, you pull out the telephoto lens.  If you want to keep the subject small, you reach for the wide angle.

It is true that lenses will help get you closer, or move you back, but your feet can do that for free.  Understanding the impact different lenses have on the final image is an important step for the developing photographer.  50mm lenses are commonly referred to as “normal.”  The question is what does normal mean?  Photographically speaking, a normal lens is one that records the scene in a way that is similar to how the human eye sees it.  A similarity in angle of view and perspective is shared.  As we shift away from normal, our lenses began to deviate from reality in a number of ways.

Telephoto lenses start at around 100mm and extend all the way out to 800mm.  Sure these lenses enlarge the subject, but they also manipulate the scene in two unique ways.

First, telephoto lenses have a drastically reduced angle of view.  Where a 50mm lens records 39 degrees, a 500mm lens records a mere 4 degrees.  The impact for photographers is twofold.  As we well know, the reduced angle of view gives the appearance that the subject is closer.  This limited angle of view has the added advantage of limiting how much of the background is included.  This gives the photographer much greater control over what is included in the background because moving a few inches can totally change an image’s background.

Second, telephoto lenses compress distance.  Subjects that are far away from each other appear closer together when viewed through a telephoto lens.  For example, the image above gives the appearance that the rock hoodoos of Bryce Canyon are stacked very close together.  This is an optical illusion as there is often between 30 – 50 feet separating the different hoodoos.  This compression effect gives photographers the ability to show or imply relationships between subjects that might not otherwise be obvious.

Telephoto lenses, with their narrow angle of view, are outstanding tools for visually isolating subjects and removing distractions.

Where telephoto lenses compress, wide angle lenses expand.  Starting at around 35mm, wide angle lenses are the go to tool for landscape photographers who wish to document the grand landscape.  As the name implies, wide angle lenses encompass an expanded angle of view when compared to longer lenses.  Angle of view can range from 54 degrees (35mm) to 108 degrees (13mm).  Yet including more means additional care must be taken when composing the scene if distractions are to be prevented.

At the same time, wide angles distort distance.  While telephoto lenses compress, wide angles exaggerate, giving the appearance of greater distances between subjects.  Again lets look at an example from Bryce Canyon.  The above image shows a trail wandering down into the hoodoos.  Looking at the hoodoos, it is clear that there is a fair amount of space between they.  Yet this is the same basic area that was photographed in the previous image.  By using a wide angle lens, a radically different perspective about how the hoodoos are spaced was created.

Wide angle lenses do not isolate elements the way telephoto lenses do.  Wide angles are more inclusive and should be used so as to take advantage of that inclusivity.  By placing key elements extremely close to the lens (a few inches), size and distance can be manipulated so as to emphasize particular parts of the scene.