You could do much worse than learning from the best wildlife photographers. Actually, the BBC Wildlife Magazine is now providing an impressive list of compact training courses for wildlife photography. There are titles like:

• Wild Places
• Mammal Portraits
• Plant Portraits
• From Dusk to Dawn
• Underwater Photography
• Invertebrate Portraits
• Birds in Flight
• Animals in their Environment
• Bird Portraits
• Reptiles and Amphibians
• Creative Visions of Nature
• Wet Weather Wildlife
• Cold Weather Wildlife
• Black and White Photography
• Urban and Garden Wildlife
• Zoo Photography
• Bird Behaviour
• Mammal Behaviour
• Extreme Close-Up
• Innovative Wildlife Photography
• The World in our Hands

Those are complete courses that have been published previously on paper in 2006 and on. If you did not get them at the time, you can now grab the PDF files. You will appreciate the progression from mostly animal portraits to more sophisticated or more subtle kinds of pictures. All of them are great.

If you are as found of action movies and action video games as you love photography, you may appreciate the looks of this small hot-shoe accessory which will help you align your camera with your subject. Four separate reticles (Point, Circle Point, Circle Cross, Cross), two colors (green, red), and three laser strengths define this CR2032-battery-powered $45 gadget.

It’s probably better for wildlife photography if you are not afraid of looking like a weirdo hunting wildlife with extremely unusual devices (it never looked as appropriate as today to associate this news to the “shoot” category/theme.

Buy it from Brando.

The Seneca Army Depot (in Seneca County, New York State) has been held by the US Army from the Second World War to the Gulf War. One of the great impacts of a US Army closed location is that wild animals are mostly out of reach and live quietly with minimal interaction with humans. In this case, the phenomenon was completed with the fact that some of the deers in the Conservation Area have an albino gene which makes their hair completely white.

While this is not unheard of, this is a clear disadvantage in terms of protection against most predators (starting with Man). But the situation led to the development of what is thought to be the world’s largest herd of white deers.

Pictures by Kevin Colton

It would be fun to have a photo trip there. But I understand that this is not possible for now.

The leopard seal is really a big predator (check its size on the photos) and it’s perfectly adapted to its environment (much more than a man in a diving suit). But this one, not only let National Geographic photographer Paul Nicklen shoot great pictures, but tried to help him by feeding him live penguins.

It is not always easy to shoot rare animals, like a North Chinese leopard (Panthera pardus japonensis). These photographers found the solution at the Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg (Germany).

(Joern Pollex/Getty Images)

When wildlife photo meets tabloid-like photography.

Melissa Brandt just wanted to take a photo of her husband and herself. But, as it happens sometimes, an intruder came into the frame. Except that this time it is a ground squirrel from Banff National Park who came checking the photo camera.

It has been revealed by a scientific study that ecotourists (and certainly wildlife photographers like you and me are falling in this category) are actually much more disturbing to wildlife than initially supposed. As written by New Scientist, “The sound of even a quiet conversation caused the birds [hoatzins in the Amazonian forest] to begin clucking and defecating – a common defense response – at longer approach distances than for quiet approaches.”

So, if you want to make a good photo, if you want to limit your impact on Nature when shooting photos, forget about speaking, concentrate on the image and think about not frightening your models. Shouldn’t that be the a natural way to approach wildlife photography?

photo credit: Veronique Debord

Sometimes, in the past, I wondered if it would be difficult to shoot animals in a forest. When I traveled to Amazonia, I could observe by myself that it is much more difficult than elsewhere (and specifically more difficult than in Brazil’s Pantanal).

The obstacles:

• Animals are often high in the trees (nearly never creeping on the ground). So, they are far from you. You need a long tele lens with a very powerful image stabilization.
• Animals are often back-lighted (everything turns gray, even the most colorful tucan toco as below)
• It is sometimes very difficult to go through the vegetation, but you need to cross to the clearings (or you can use the banks of a river

The following video (found on the Internet) will give you an idea of what I mean.

Then, you only (!) have to stay aware of the difficulties, to take them into account in choosing what equipment to bring (tele lens, tripod, monopod, good walking shoes, etc.) and to be attentive to the solutions you can use to work around the toughest issues (avoid back-lighted situations, use the High-Dynamic mode of your SLR photo camera, etc.)

Nature photography and wildlife photography are two specialities that can be classified as difficult. Here, nothing beats advice from great photographers. This is why I noticed those two great articles, though they are very different:

1. Mark Godfrey explains on Nature.org how are made some superb nature images. The pictures are permanent in their classic vibrance and shiny light.
2. Nearly at the other end of the spectrum, and bizarrely complementary, I read Erwan Balança offering us a different view, a call for a more subtle wildlife photography. Probably a harder goal to reach but trying to reach out for the senses of the spectator: La photo animalière, une spécialité exigeante (in French).

Here are three photos I shot last Sunday during a visit to the Lake Der-Chantecoq.

Great Crested Grebe, backlit	Great Crested Grebe in the sunrise	Duck, flying, backlit
Click on the thumbnails to enlarge them

If you want to only watch the photographs, you can merely ask for a large format print on RedBubble (or a simple card).

But I think that the story of these three photos is a good example of what I (sometimes) succeed in doing in photography. Let me tell you this story.
(more…)

After publishing about birds in Paris, I had to give you examples of an immediate application: I went to the bois de Vincennes which is at the South East end of Paris, a large public area where many people go for jogging, walking or cycling. And with the help of Fabrice and Christian, I met with several interesting birds including a Common Kestrel and some Eurasian Jays.

Let’s start with the nice little kestrel.

Since I wanted to play with the framing of the bird, first, 3 panoramas (both vertical and horizontal), then 2 squares.

Common kestrel
Common kestrel	Common kestrel
Common kestrel	Common kestrel
Common kestrel	Common kestrel
Common kestrel	Common kestrel

Common Kestrel (Falco tinnunculus, Faucon crécerelle, Cernícalo común)
Photographed in Paris, bois de Vincennes (in the immediate outskirts of Paris). Feburary 2009.

If you want to photograph birds in Paris, I invite you to check one or more of the following web sites (listed in no specific order). They could be quite useful for your ornithology work, I guess.

• Birding – ÃŽle-de-France
• Les oiseaux de Paris (the birds of Paris), the much-detailled web site of Jean-Jacques Boujot. Often updated with new photos (under Creative Commons). [French]
• Le moineau de Paris (The sparrow of Paris) [French]
• The observation sites in bois de Vincennes, listed by Frédéric Leviez. [French]