Guide to Outdoor Photography

by Barry Craft

Outdoor photography can help you share the duty of the wilderness with your friends and family. If you will be taking pictures of wild animals, the first and most important rule is to be patient! Good pictures require lots of patience, so make sure you move slowly and don’t scare the animals away. Keep far enough away so you don’t scare the animals, but close enough where you can get good pictures.

Small animals will look small in a picture, so take the picture closer to ground level to get a better picture. You may need a zoom lens for this type of a photograph. This is probably something you will want to consider when purchasing a camera.

Even if you don’t get any good pictures on the first day, don’t be discouraged. There will always be another opportunity to take a good picture. Also, don’t get too close to large wildlife, since they are big and can be photographed easily.

Always be prepared, since the right one opportunity to take a picture could be there one second, and gone the next. Also, make sure that you capture the eyes of the animals. When you capture the eyes, you capture a great photo.

Natural lighting is another important factor in outdoor photography. Depending on the time of year, time of day, etc., your lighting will be different. The time of day, such as sunrise or sunset, can give your photo personality and feeling. Also, the angle of the sun is important.

You may have to use a fill flash to decrease the amount of shadows in the picture. The time of year also has some bearing on the lighting. The worst time of day to take pictures is mid-day, since the sun is directly overhead. The use of flash and help offset the harsh shadows the sun creates, especially in the middle of the day.

The best way to ensure image brilliance is to use a tripod. The tripod will bring out the best in the lenses that you buy. Make sure you buy a sturdy, rigid tripod, as this will create the best images.

Make sure to keep your lens clean since sand or dust can create specks on all of your photos. If there is sand on your lens, you may not want to try cleaning it yourself. See a professional because if you scratch your lens, you will have to buy a replacement or else have scratches in all of your pictures, which is no good.

After you download your images to your computer, you can use a photo editing program to tweak or enhance your already beautiful photograph.

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This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 2:34 pm and is filed under Hobbies. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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