Wildlife photography

Today I read an an article by Jim Zuckerman and what he thinks of Wildlife photography and how to improve it. Jim thinks that, to take a great animal picture, great light is the primary requirement to successed that picture. Through this article you can learn from Zuckerman what he thinks about light while taking wildlife picture and with that create a "WOW!" response from the viewers. 

The first thing he talks about is the five types of lightning available when photographing outdoor. As he describes in the article "Light can illuminate a subject from:

1. the front,
2. the side,
3. the back,
4. a three-quarter angle, or
5. within, where a translucent object seems to glow from within."

He then talks about how the sun can affect your photo. If the sun is low in the horizon, it is going to reduce your contrast in the picture. So the lower the sun is, the lower the contrast will be, and vice versa. Since this is happening it allows both the shadows and highlights in the picture to have a "pleasing degree of details". In his article he show us example of how this looka like.

Jim explains how a second flash/strobes "adds dimensionality and life to a shot in these kinds of situations." But that he rather prefer to use the available light to make the picture more natural. He tries to avoid direct sunlight during the middle of the day and rather shoot in shadow. Jim explains in his article that shade makes these kind of outdoor portrait much more attractive, because, "it retains the the subtle light and dark relationships on your subject." and as he says, even fillight attends to reduce those subtle details.

Below is a picture of a moose that Jim has taken, he says that he owes a lot to the natural light that was available at that moment. 

                                                                       Jim Zuckerman

After reading this arictle I've learned that light is not the best solution in outdoor environments like this but that I can take a lot of help from the natural light sources, the sun. By knowing how to take advantage of the sun and it's pointings I can thereby get better pictures.