The Wild Photographer

Wildlife Photography 102 and 103: Advanced Methods for Pro-Level Results

• Court Whelan • Episode 82

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There’s a big difference between taking a photo of wildlife and making a wildlife photograph.

That’s really the heart of this episode. In Wildlife Photography 102 and 103, we move beyond the basics and into the field-tested techniques that help transform a good wildlife sighting into a more captivating, artful, professional-looking image.

This isn’t about needing the fanciest camera or the biggest lens. It’s about learning how to stack the deck in your favor, first with Technique... choosing your angle, understanding light, reading behavior, waiting for the moment, managing your background, and dialing in the right settings so that when the magic happens, you’re ready for it. And, why the best wildlife photographers are often the ones who watch first and shoot second.

Then we shift into the Settings side of the equation: why shooting in RAW is such a game changer, why I love manual mode with Auto ISO, how to think about shutter speed for calm wildlife versus true action, and when to use burst mode or pre-record features to capture moments that happen faster than your brain can react.

The overall goal? To move past the “field guide shot” and create wildlife images that feel more alive, more intentional, and more memorable.

In This Episode

We cover:

  • How to avoid the classic “field guide shot”
  • Why low angles create more intimate and aesthetic wildlife images
  • How telephoto lenses can help lower your effective shooting angle
  • How background separation creates that pro-level wildlife portrait look
  • Why distance between the animal and background matters so much
  • How to choose backgrounds based on color, texture, pattern, and layers
  • Why patience is often the secret ingredient in great wildlife photography
  • How to wait for the best moment instead of settling for the obvious one
  • What catch light is and why it brings life into an animal’s eye
  • Why shooting to edit can improve your compositions
  • How golden hour, clouds, and dramatic weather can elevate your photos
  • When spot metering can create more dramatic or unexpected exposures
  • Why shooting in RAW is essential for advanced editing
  • Why manual mode plus Auto ISO is my favorite setup for wildlife
  • How to think about shutter speed for different kinds of wildlife behavior
  • When to use motion blur creatively
  • How panning can create streaky, dynamic wildlife images
  • Why burst mode is so useful for fleeting behavior
  • How pre-record features can help capture pounces, takeoffs, breaches, and other split-second moments

Final Thoughts

Wildlife Photography 102 and 103 is really about becoming more intentional and creating art vs. just documenting what you saw. It’s the shift from “I saw something amazing” to “I made something compelling out of the moment.”

That comes from little choices that add up: getting lower, watching the background, waiting for behavior, catching the light in the eye, choosing the right shutter speed, and giving yourself room to edit. None of these techniques require perfection. They just require awareness — and a willingness to slow down, observe, and make decisions before the moment disappears.

Court's Websites

Sponsors and Promo Codes:


Court (00:00)
Hey friends, welcome back to the Wild Photographer Podcast. I'm your host, Court Whelan and today we are talking about wildlife photography 102 and 103. These are techniques and settings for advancing your photography for pro level results.

And I have to say there's kind of a fuzzy line between the whole 101, 102, 103. You know, whether you are a beginner just getting started, an advanced beginner, a solid intermediate, or even kind of getting into that advanced level, this episode is definitely to give you tips and tricks and insight.

Into that next step in your wildlife photography, however you want to envision it. Sometimes when I think about the 101, 102 terminology, I think, well, shouldn't it technically be 101 and then 201? I feel like when I was in college, that's how they did it. But either way, I think you get the point that this is definitely a more advanced tutorial on how to really level up your game. I'm not saying you have to be an advanced photographer, but you're gonna be getting there with these tips and tricks that I've learned from decades in the field, capturing wildlife around the world.

We're talking about how to encounter and how to realize that moment. We're talking about shooting at low angles and catch light, background things like separation and choosing your background, shooting to edit, chasing light, and even techniques like spot metering versus evaluative or a matrix metering.

We also go into advanced settings like why you should be shooting in RAW, my ideal camera settings, which are the manual plus auto ISO mode. I'll tell you all about that. We're talking about mastering shutter speed and adding motion blur.

and we're also talking about your drive motor and things like pre-record, some of these new fancy, awesome things coming out in cameras these days. So we've got a lot to dive into. Before we begin, I want to give a quick thanks to one of the sponsors of the show, Art Storefronts.

Because I want to share something that's genuinely changed how I approach the business side of photography. And that is indeed my website through Art Storefronts. Like a lot of photographers, I'd much rather be out in the field creating photographs than sitting behind a laptop trying to figure out how to market and sell and showcase my work. That side of things can be fun, but can also feel very overwhelming pretty quickly. And if you're not consistent, you're already starting out on the back foot. So Art Storefronts adds that consistency. And what I've found is it's not just a beautiful website, it's a full system.

Built specifically for photographers, for artists who want to actually generate income from their work.

They are a one-stop shop from beautiful website design to built-in promo and sales tools to marketing features that help you stay consistent without a lot of added work. And most importantly, there's a real human support element behind the whole thing. You're not just trying to figure everything out from software and you know basically doing it on your own. There are people behind the scenes, in front of scenes to help support you. You make those connections and they're there to guide you and hold your hand along the way. And here's something really great for listeners of The Wild Photographer. If you mention this podcast when you talk to art store friends,

They will set you up and optimize your website completely for free. That means they're gonna build your website for free. That's like almost a $2,000 value. So I love them, they're great folks. I've had a lot of success with them. And it's just a great, beautiful website. So even if you're not trying to sell stuff, it's just a wonderful way to do something with your photos. So head on over to artstorefronts.com check it out, and make sure you mention this podcast to get that full setup included for free.

Okay, so let's get into the show about advancing your wildlife photography for those pro-level results. And this is, you know, really just going a step or several steps beyond the documentary type wildlife photography that I started out doing. I still do some, but it's gonna get you to think beyond just,

I see an amazing animal, maybe it's doing something great. I'm gonna snap it, and thank goodness it's in a beautiful setting, and thank goodness everything's working out, and it's a pretty decent photo. Let's say it's a great photo. This is how to stack the deck in your favor. These are techniques that are tried and true from years and years of experience that get you to make the image, that get you to create something,

These are the cards that you're putting in that deck to stack it. So, you know, the overall gist is you're trying to captivate the viewer. You might be the viewer, but let's talk about other people. You're trying to captivate your audience with this animal and with this wildlife. It doesn't have to be doing something crazy and wild necessarily. The animal doesn't have to be doing, you know, the most extraordinary thing. Sometimes the stoic nature is just fine, but you know, you really want to think about how are you going to capture it beyond just documenting it.

One

thing I think about often is not getting, trying not to get the field guide shot, the quote unquote field guide shot. And so when you open a field guide like an Audubon guide or any of the digital guides now, like Seek or iNaturalist, you're going to see photos that document that bird, that moose, that whatever, very well. It's going to be very descriptive. It's going to show the antlers of the moose, and it's going to show the color and the patterns. It's going to show maybe the hump on the back to distinguish between a male and a female grizzly bear.

etc. etc.

so th those things are important. Like you want to capture the essence, but you do want to make some art out of it. And this is where going beyond that to not just document that you saw the animal and that's where it was and that's where it was doing, those are all important things, and they definitely play into the idea of storytelling, but we're trying to think beyond to really get a next level shot so you're not just documenting, you're making art out of this extraordinary or maybe even less than extraordinary sighting. You're making something captivating, beautiful, intriguing.

Something that people might want to reshare on social media, something that people might want to actually print off and put on their walls, something heck you might want to print off and put on your walls, something you want to put on a desktop screensaver, all these sorts of things. And so this list is gonna be getting you to increase your chances of getting a really captivating photo. So I wanted to start off with that. That really what we're trying to do is get this photo to be captivating, going well beyond just documentary descriptive kind of photography.

So the first one we're gonna talk about is really, really important to level up your wildlife photography, and that's shooting at a low angle. And I'm talking about shooting at a low angle to the ground. We're obviously talking about terrestrial wildlife here, but that's probably the majority of what you're photographing or what the average person's photographing is stuff on land. So shooting at a low angle means that you are trying to get down as close to eye level as possible.

The goal is to not be shooting down at the animal. The goal is not be shooting up at the animal, but trying to shoot at eye level. And this is great for a few reasons. One is it gives you a great sense of the animal.

You are on par with it, you're on plane with it. you're gonna get a lot of great distance in the background. We'll talk about that next. But shooting the eye level is really great. And you can do this in a few different ways. You don't necessarily have to be on your knees, on your hands, you know, down on the ground. There are a few different hacks. So obviously the best thing is encountering a wildlife and being able to physically move yourself so you can be on plane with it. But there are some other tips and tricks. Like I photograph polar bears often and we are somewhat forced to be off the ground, right? We might be up front.

five or six feet from the ground. But what you can do is if you use more telephoto

And photograph that bear, that wildlife at a greater distance, what that does is actually lowers your angle to the ground and makes it more acute if you think back to good old trigonometry class. Because you're shooting far away, it's not like you're pointing the camera down. You're actually pointing it a little bit more on plane. So this is a big feather in the cap of having some beefy telephoto power and why photos often you might come back from a trip and say, Why in the world do the far away photos actually look better? Well, it's probably because you're shooting more parallel to the ground. So underlining

that point again the idea here is when we're talking about a low angle the barrel of your lens is more parallel to the ground okay so this is gonna make a really really captivating scene it's gonna get you and your viewer to connect with the animal and it has all these other ancillary benefits

Like being able to get more background in the shot and getting more distance in the background. So that's my next topic is background separation. So with most wildlife photography, we're aiming for some sort of version of wildlife portraiture. Like we are showcasing the animal. The animal is big and dominant in the scene.

And so when you can get a more distant background in the scene, what that does is that puts the background further away from the animal and it gives you a shallower depth of field. The animal is still in tack sharp focus. It doesn't really matter if you're photographing at f4, f5.6, even f8. Some of these bigger lenses are at like f7.1 and f8. If you can maximize the distance behind the subject, you're gonna get that blur even better than if you sprang for an f2.8 lens. You probably know what I'm talking about.

Like we might be shooting at a 100 to 400 zoom telephoto, it's f4.5 to 5.6, and we say, I'm never gonna get that same blur effect as a beautiful three or four hundred millimeter f2.8 prime because I can only go to 5.6 or heck

my 100 to 500 lens doesn't go lower than f7.1. But the reality is it's actually your composition of the shot, your positioning for the shot that's gonna have the biggest impact. This still works with big old f2.8 lenses, and it might work even better, but the reality is you can get very, very close

To what they're showcasing by actually planning your shot out a little bit. So, here let me give you an example. So, let's say we're photographing moose. I was photographing moose a few years ago at Brainerd Lake in Colorado. It's beautiful, it's in the fall, you get these golden aspens and yellow cottonwood leaves, and moose are in their sort of rutting season. They're looking for mates, and they're not uncommon. Like you could probably spend a half day up there and get some pretty good shots of moose. So, what you want to do is as you find your

Wildlife, you know, it could be moose, it could be anything. Is you want to start looking at well, what is the ratio of you to the wildlife to the background?

And so let's say you're, you know, like 40 yards, 40 meters away from the moose, but then the moose itself is in amongst the vegetation. It's it's like 10 feet or three meters away from its background. It doesn't matter if you have the fastest, lowest F number lens on the planet, that background is still gonna be relatively in focus. And that's not necessarily a bad thing. You know, I'm talking about these yellow aspen leaves, and you can imagine the beautiful scene with kind of the white bark. But oftentimes what we're trying to do is have that shallow depth of field for a few reasons.

Is that it minimizes distractions. Okay, so if you have a lot of foliage and a lot of texture and a lot of color behind the animal,

It's gonna look pretty distracting. And to be totally honest, compared to pro-level wildlife photographers, it's gonna look a little bit more amateur because everything's in focus, there's a lot going on. Maybe they are pleasing colors and textures, and maybe you really compose your shot well with leading lines and rule of thirds. But nine times out of ten, unless you're really zooming out and getting the whole scene, like a wildlife in landscape shot, nine times out of ten, you are gonna prefer that background to be blurred. So this is where you have to make some calculated decisions of where you're.

At where the moose is at, and what is behind the moose. So the first thing I'm gonna do is as I'm looking at this scene, I'm gonna, you know, keep an eye on the moose. You have to be careful in all this, like moose are dangerous. A lot of wildlife you don't want to spook or threaten, or you don't want to push them off, and you don't want to put yourself in danger. So you have to be cognizant of where you move, but you want to start to look to see, you know, where are the gaps in the trees, or is this moose just in front of the aspen trees? But then just to the left of the moose is the rest of the

Meadow,

like the stand of aspen trees ends such that it is the meadow, it's the mountains in the background. Could I myself move a little bit left or right such that I rotate around the moose? And instead of the trees, just a few feet or a few meters behind the moose, can I increase that distance so that it's not me with a much bigger ratio of distance to the moose than the moose is to its background? Can I flip that? Can I turn it on its head? It may not be me getting close.

Closer to the moose, but it's me trying to figure out how I can increase the distance of that background. So I'm gonna rotate, I might go up or down, I might hold a camera over my head or down on the ground in certain scenarios. This is sort of in concert with the idea of shooting at a low angle. Low angle is always great, but you might minimize that background and those distractions or create a clearer path behind the wildlife by moving your camera. Most of the time, this is me actually pivoting. Like imagine me being in a circle.

So

So I'm not actually moving closer or farther than the animal, but I'm pivoting where the animal is in the dead middle of the circle and I'm just rotating around it. What if I move, you know, what if I hike two minutes to my right, the moose stays there, it's still a clear view for a photograph, but all of a sudden it's no longer the trees in the background, it's a beautiful mountain scene, and then that mountain scene is going to be nicely blurred. You might also be thinking, well gosh, that seems like a great landscape shot, and it probably is, but the whole point is you can choose your background.

Can move, you can move for colors and textures in the background, but most of the time, what I'm thinking about is I want to get the background out of the way. I want to create a ton of distance behind the animal so that when I am shooting at f7.1 or some not amazing aperture, it's gonna have that background melt away. So one reason this is good, I told you already, is that it's going to minimize distraction, it's gonna give you that pro-level look. But then part of this is also because of that slightly blurred background, it's going to make your wildlife subject look

Even sharper. I'll say that again. The blurred background contrasting with the sharp wildlife subject is gonna make the wildlife look even sharper. Now, of course, you're gonna wanna focus on the wildlife and get it sharp, but that juxtaposition, that contrast between a slightly blurred background or heck, a lot blurred background with the sharp animal just makes that animal pop off the page, almost looks like three-dimensional, and it's gonna look like a tack sharp image even more than if you were just to have it sharp with a sharp background. So again, that background separation.

is a really really big thing in pro-level wildlife photography. And because we can't control wildlife, we don't want to control wildlife, the best way to do so is that you have to plan your shot. You have to think about where can I move safely and effectively to get distance behind the wildlife subject, such that the ratio may be skewed that I'm actually closer to the animal than the animal is to its background. Again, underlining the point here, you are not necessarily moving towards the animal. Certain animals are dangerous. You don't want

spooked animal, but oftentimes it might be just finding where this

channel of my shot, if I'm getting the moose here, that background is way far away. It's gonna be a beautiful photo each and every time.

So I already briefly mentioned this, but choosing your background for other reasons is important too. Let's say you have two different shots

And the background is the same distance for each. I oftentimes like to really think about the background for my wildlife shots in order to elevate the composition, in order to elevate the colors and the textures. How can I add layers into the shot? So this may not be necessarily to emphasize background separation and that wonderful subject sharpness, but it might be just because if I move to the left or the right, or if I move up a hill or downhill, the background of the animal is a nice snow-capped mountain, or it's yellow aspen leaves. Or if I move a little bit

But more instead of aspen leaves and a lot of white tree trunks, it's only aspen leaves and green grasses, or I guess brown grasses if we're talking about the fall. Either way, start to think about colors, textures, patterns. What does the background of that animal look like? And I think we often get sucked into this idea that, well, I'm just gonna stand in the area where the moose or the whatever it might be is looking at me or it's looking in this direction. Well, the reality is that wildlife move and the chance that it's gonna turn or move or

Do something different is pretty significant. And I'll tell you, after years of photographing, it's it's certainly a luxury that I have, but I would rather wait for a really, really great shot that I know is gonna be useful, that I know is gonna go on various platforms, I'm gonna send out, I'm gonna print out, or put on my website than just getting kind of a ho- hum field guide shot of a moose looking at me with a not so great kind of boring background. So, yes, it's a little bit risky, you have to potentially sacrifice the layup shot for the slam dunk, but I'm telling you.

If you do this a lot, if you want to get those pro-level results, you want to go for the slam dunk, to keep with the sports analogy here, and you want to maybe predict the wildlife's movement, but then really level up your game and setting yourself up for a much better shot.

Okay, so the next thing is going to be waiting for the best moment. So these things obviously the more you stack on top of one another, the better the shot's gonna be. But let's be honest, wildlife is unpredictable a lot of the times. It's erratic, it moves this way and that way, so you can't necessarily get great background separation and a low angle and wait for the best moment. But really waiting for the moment is another way to get you a next level advanced shot. And this means that you might have to sacrifice

Some of these other things in order to get some sort of storytelling moment. Maybe it's putting the camera down and watching the moose for 30 minutes and seeing and mapping its behavior and saying, you know what? Every time it chews on a few twigs, it tends to put its head up and sniff the air. That's the moment when it sniffs. Maybe it's exhaling a little bit and a bit of mist or or breath fog is coming out of its nose. You kind of want something other than just a moose sitting there looking to the right. You know, I mean that's great.

Again, it's great field guide shot, but we're talking about elevating this. So what are the things that could make it interesting? Well, maybe it's picking up a hoof, maybe it's scratching its back with its antler, maybe it's got the scent of a of a conspecific, you know, a female, another moose, maybe it's looking startled because another bull moose is in the area and you he might think he's going into battle, but waiting for something that is different. So the only way you figure out what is different is by watching this thing for a little bit. And far be it from me to say whether 30 minutes is enough.

or two minutes is enough, you know, you might want to get in and get out of there. You might be kind of impatient like I am and just want to get shots in the meantime. But don't take those ho hum shots in place of taking that beautiful moment. And I've found through the years is that just waiting patiently, studying the behavior and waiting for it to do something different is the best way to map out some really interesting moment because photography is all about the moment.

And let me emphasize the real key point here is the only way you're going to understand what is different is to understand what is the norm. And the only way to understand the norm is by spending some time with this critter.

The next one is capturing catch light in an animal's eye. And catch light is that sparkle in the eye when the animal is looking towards the sun and there's a little glimmer, it's a little white reflection of the bright sunlight in its eye. And this is just, it's a really nuance, it's a very small thing. You might be saying, my goodness, why do I need to look for, you know, a shot that has five pixels of white in its eye? What difference is that gonna make? well, do some before and after tests, do some experiments. I can tell you, especially if you're zooming in on an animal's face.

It's hugely important, but that little catch light just gives that glimmer of life. It gives it that sparkle and that twinkle in the eye. And the way you do it is by making sure that the sun is in front of the animal in some way. And when I say in front, it could be somewhere like 180 degrees in front. It could be that the sun's actually, you know, somewhat behind the animal, but as the animal picks its head up and turns right, you get this perfect angle where the sun is reflecting in its eye and you're actually getting this interesting backlighting.

So the whole idea here

is: is there a scenario where the sun can be at your back and wildlife in front of you? That's the easiest, most obvious way to get catch light in the eye. But the other part is if you don't get that perfect scenario, because again, we can't perfectly map out and control wildlife movement, can you position yourself to try to get that reflection? The sun could even be slightly in front of you. And if that animal picks its head up and angles to the right and looks towards the sun, you might be at that perfect angle to get a little bit of catch light in that eye.

And I'm telling you, if you are into wildlife portraiture, if you're into big wildlife shots, especially if you're filling the frame with its body, with its face, it's gonna be a really next level game changer addition to your shot. So looking for catch light. I mentioned eye shine, I just wanna differentiate this. We're usually not going for eye shine. Eye shine is really typically more of what happens to like nocturnal animals. It has to do with the reflection of this thing behind the animal's retina. And that's when you have like this glowing yellow or green or red from

the the eye shine of the animal at night, that is different than catch light. Catch light is just a little sparkle in the eye and it can send your photo from great to excellent or good to great or however you want to envision it. it's a next level thing that I look for each and every time That I'm getting wildlife photos.

Next up is plan to shoot to edit. Okay. And so what that means, this is gonna require you to have some experience, some track record, some consistency with the editing process to know what is possible in your photos from taking an original raw shot. You know, how much can I really brighten the shadows? How much can I really saturate? How much can I crop in? Typically, I'm thinking about cropping when I'm thinking about shooting to edit. And the point here is that oftentimes I will photograph a little bit wider.

Than the ultimate shot, than the ending shot, the photo that's gonna be exported from my program and shared. So when I'm in front of something, I might be vexed where I'm I'm thinking, gosh, I just don't know the composition in this scene. I feel like I want to align that tree in the left-hand side, but I'm not really sure. And this is

really great technique when you are waiting for that moment, because if you're waiting for a single moment that might last only a couple seconds, it's not a lot of time to compose your photo perfectly. So if you shoot a bit wider such that you know you can crop in after the fact, maybe by 30%. And that way you can wiggle your photo, you can align various parts of the scene to things like leading lines and rule of thirds. It gives you a lot more flexibility. Once you take the shot, you can always zoom in, but you can never zoom out.

From what the photo actually was. So shooting to edit, yes, it can be talking about shadows and highlights and saturation and contrast, but really what I'm thinking about is shooting a little bit wider, maybe somewhere around 30%, because with my camera, I know I can crop in that much, still retain the quality, still retain the megapixels, but now I have free reign to compose a shot after the fact, maybe in a couple of different ways. maybe I can photograph a portrait oriented shot and turn it into.

A landscape or vice versa. So, yes, this flies in the face of getting the most pixels, the most definition. You know, shooting in camera oftentimes is the best result, but when I'm hurried, when I'm waiting for that perfect moment, when I'm photographing wildlife behavior, I am gonna deliberately zoom out a bit because I want to have that flexibility and creative control in the post-processing process to recompose my shot, knowing that I can edit, so I do shoot to edit.

So light is this is like a cliche, but it is

So much of photography. I don't want to say it's everything because you know we just talked about a lot of other important things, but finding the best light is is so paramount to pro-level wildlife photography, next level wildlife photography. If you if you want to advance the look of your wildlife photos, prioritize certain times of day. And I'm not saying that you have to wake up at four in the morning to get a good shot. There are midday times that are great as well,

But in general, the best light is soft, low-angled, directional light. Okay, so when might we have that? Well, dawn and dusk is a great time when the sun just begins to peak over the horizon. If you're in mountainous landscapes, oftentimes the sun rises, but it's hidden behind a mountain, so you get this nice, really soft, diffuse light. Or if you don't have that mountain, the sun is just up, you know, the first 30 to 60 minutes after the sun rises, because it has more atmosphere to go through, it has this golden look.

It's got a soft look, sometimes it might be through clouds or or haze on the horizon, and it's like putting a big flash softbox in front of your subject with really colorful, beautiful, natural light, emphasis on natural. So the golden hour is a great time to photograph. It's roughly the hour after sunrise or the hour before sunset, but that's not the only time. although I will prioritize that time if you're really after the best shots. But sometimes during the day, if you watch the weather, it can be extraordinary too. So when

else might you have soft angled diffuse light? Well through cloudy weather. If you know you're gonna have a rainy day or a day with lots of mixed clouds and sunshine, waiting for those photos until the sun is just behind the clouds can be a really really great time to get that soft even lighting. And it's a wonderful time because you get a lot of good light so you're not stressed out by ISO and shutter speeds and all that but then you're getting this nice even lighting so you don't get those harsh highlights and harsh contrasts.

And harsh shadows. So cloudy weather is great. Overall, weather is great. Now, this depends on the species and where you're at and what you're looking for, but like tumultuous weather can be really, really good. Dramatic, big, billowing thunderstorms in the distance. You know, I've mentioned this before, and I have to definitely say be safe with all this. You know, you don't want to be out in a lightning storm and have something happen.

But challenging weather can provide something different. And I always like to say that if you want to get to that advanced level, if you want to advance your photography, if you're stuck in a rut, if you're trying to break out of the mold, have your photos look different, if you want something you've never had, you've got to do something you've never done. And you want to think and look different with your photography. This means maybe being in a place or in an environment or in weather conditions when not a lot of other people are out there. Not a lot of other people are photographing or viewing wildlife in these scenarios.

get really interesting lighting you might get beams of light peeking through thunderclouds so weather can be a glorious thing but chasing the best light is a surefire way to level up your wildlife photography so kind of in order of priority I think golden hour golden light at the you know first and last hour of light a day and then really thinking about cloudy weather and then if you can safely think about when there might be some storms coming in and would there be species of wildlife that are active

during that time that you can photograph.

And the final thing I'll mention on the technique side is spot metering. Okay, so this is this is a camera setting, but it really is more of a technique.

This is gonna be a nice parlay into the the settings part of this talk. But spot metering is really a great way to kind of break out of a creative rut and get a pro-level result because it forces you to think differently about your exposure. So, what spot metering is, is you are only metering for the dead middle of your frame. And this is in contrast to like full scene metering, like the whole camera frame, the whole camera sensor. In Canon, it's called evaluative. In Nikon, it's called Matrix. I'm not sure what it's called in

Sony and OM and others, but basically, you can you can tell in the camera, or it could be a very, very quick internet search. Spot metering means it's gonna exposure for only the thing in the dead middle of your frame. And I don't use this all the time, but when I've gotten the shot, when I've gotten the field guide shot, and maybe it's just too hard to choose my background, maybe I can't move around safely, or there just is no opportunity for me to move left and right and get a different background. If I'm trying to think about different shots, pro level shots, something a little

little

bit extra, I will put my camera on spot metering because it's going to exaggerate exposure usually on either end, somewhat predictably, somewhat unpredictably, and give you really interesting results that you may not have tried in the first place. And when I say interesting results, that means that the entire scene is gonna be either much lighter or much darker than you might otherwise expect. Because if you think about with a whole scene metering, what it's trying to do is choose an average of 18% gray across all pixels, whereas spot metering

it's still trying to choose 18% gray, but only that dead middle focus point of your scene, like only the animal, or maybe only the forehead of the animal. So oftentimes you're you're forcing the camera to make this kind of radical decision for you, but it can produce some really interesting results. And I do know a lot of pro photographers that use this technique and get some really, really fascinating, beautiful lighting schemes in an otherwise kind of, you know, maybe a boring lighting condition.

Okay, so next up I've got about six or seven other tips, and these go into the other bucket. These were all techniques that I started off with. Now we're getting into advancing your settings for pro-level results in your wildlife photography.

But before I get into that, I'd like to do a quick thanks to our sponsor, MPB.

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There's a warranty, easy returns, and the whole process just feels really a lot less risky than online marketplaces. And selling gear is just as straightforward. you get an instant quote online, you ship your gear with free insured shipping, and once everything checks out, you get paid directly.

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So, whether you're upgrading for your next photo trip, refining your kit, or turning old gear into funds for something new, MPB is a great place to start. Buy, sell, or trade your camera gear with MPB and keep on doing what you love. All right, now let's get back to the show. Advanced settings for wildlife photography. So the first one, I would imagine a lot of people in the audience are already using this, but I have to say it, if you're not, this is gonna be a big game changer is shooting in raw. I'm not gonna belabor the point, but shooting in raw gives you so much more.

editable capabilities. You can edit your photo 10x as much, do really dramatic things to essentially rescue shots or improve shots. And it's just an absolute game changer. So shooting in Raw is something that I wholeheartedly recommend.

I truly believe that in this day of digital photography, in this day of seeing so many photos out there, whether it's online, on marketplaces, on social media, you know, various, various platforms, is that the quickest way to level up your photography, to be totally honest. I could just do this whole show about editing wildlife photos to make the biggest difference,

But that's probably the quickest way to make such meaningful improvements.

This gonna make probably a bigger difference than even getting a new lens. So shooting in RAW to be able to edit is really paramount. And quick plug if you are interested in learning more Photoshop, Lightroom, Camera RAW capabilities and techniques. I do have a lot of videos and a growing number of videos on my YouTube channel. So just bop on over to youtube.com/@courtwhelan And I've got a lot of real-time video tutorials on how I edit my wildlife shots. And I think, you know, to be totally frank, just watching some.

Do it is probably one of the better ways to learn. There are some great courses out there, and if you are very new to Lightroom or Camera Raw, it might be good just taking a whole course. But if you've dabbled in it and you just want to see some new techniques, different ways people use masks and brushes, and/or global edits, yeah, check out my YouTube channel on that because I do want to make that as a supplementary tool to some of the things I'm yapping about here. So shoot in raw, that is probably my number one setting advice, but hey, I've got more.

my number one camera mode advice is manual plus auto ISO. So I love being able to control the aperture. I think at very least, if you want to go into that pro level or just really advanced level arena, you've got to be able to dictate your aperture.

And dictating aperture does a lot for your depth of field, whether you want a shallow depth of field and very little in focus with that nice background blur, or you might want a wildlife in landscape shot where you want everything in focus and you want something deep like an F8 or an F11. So being able to choose aperture is a must. But then with wildlife photography, it's extra important to choose your shutter speed. And I just did a whole episode on various shutter speeds for various

wildlife interactions and sightings, but being able to control shutter speed is also very important. So I think being able to choose both of those is a really, really key way to get better shots, more shots, more accurate shots, less botched shots.

But of the golden triangle of aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, ISO is the least important as far as creative control. So ISO is really just a means to an end. You want the lowest ISO possible, but you also need it fast enough to let as much light in your camera to give you the aperture you want or to give you the shutter speed you want. If you're photographing super fast motion, you might need to be on a high ISO because you do need a one over 1600 shutter speed. But this is where the digital instrument

of digital cameras comes in and really just plays an extraordinary role because it's essentially just a calculator. So I know I want a certain shutter speed, I know I want a certain aperture, but then why don't you, camera, calculate all the math that goes behind it to just give me an even exposure at whatever ISO you think is proper.

And then the added benefit on top of that is if I want to change my exposure, if you were shooting full manual, you would have to change your ISO or shutter speed or aperture. But here I can just dial my exposure up or down with a click of a button and instantly add just a little bit of light and small increments until I get it where I want it to be. So I'm sure that there are other thoughts out there. I think shooting on aperture priority mode is just fine. But if you really want to nail your wildlife photos, especially when you're trying to capture that moment in certain

behaviors manual plus auto ISO is absolutely the way to go. I've found that

by not having to control my ISO, I'm quicker to the punch, I'm less uncertain when it comes to changing the lighting because I had that control over just a little bit of light or a little bit of darkness in the scene. Wonderful way to go. So I mentioned shutter speed here, and I think that's that's really the third thing here of advanced settings is really mastering shutter speed. so like I said, I did a whole episode, but I'm actually gonna distill down into very, very simple terms the range for each kind of behavior.

as maybe like a Cliff Notes version of the previous episode. So if you are looking at calm wildlife, meaning like they're not moving a whole lot, they're not running, maybe it's munching on grasses, maybe it's

periodically sitting up from a resting position. So they're they're moving a little bit, but they're calm. One over 250 to one over 500. That's kind of a general shutter speed. If there is movement, if there's life, if there's interaction, if you want to absolutely nail the shot because you need that specific moment,

I'm looking at one over six hundred to one over a thousand for behaviors for life.

If you're looking at real deal action, it might be two moose that are in the rut, two big bulls that are battling with one another I'm looking at one over 1250 to one over 2000. And if you're in the midst of chaos, like it might be a million monarch butterflies flying around, it might be hummingbirds, it might be soaring birds, just something that's like at the very limit of your shutter speed, I really top out between one over 3200 and one over 4,000.

And I should say one over 3200 is pretty darn good for most action. So again, between one over 250 to 500 for pretty calm, gently moving, barely moving things, quickly going up to one over 600 to 1 over 1,000 for actual life and movement and behavior, 1 over 1250 to 1 over 2,000 for legit fast behavior. And if it's just off the charts in your mind, the fastest thing you've ever seen, a flying bird, a beating hummingbird, 1 over 3,200 to 1 over 4,000.

But this all involves freezing motion of wildlife, which is quite important. Like if you're trying to get that moose sniffing the air, maybe snorting, and a little bit of breath is coming out, and you can capture that in the fall or winter air, that's great. You don't want that blurred. But a pro level move is to add motion blur for wildlife in your scene. And so this might be as simple as setting your shutter speed to one fortieth of a second. It might be a little bit lower than that, it might be a little bit faster.

that depending on how fast the behavior is. But I find that when there is real deal action, like you're getting into that one over a thousand type realm

you can do the exact opposite, set it down to one over 40,

And as those moose are battling, you might get a little motion blur and just enough to show the viewer, to show yourself and to show the viewer that, hey, I'm intentionally trying to create a little bit of intrigue and mystique in the scene because there's so much movement

That I couldn't even speed the camera up enough. It's just frenetic chaos of movement. So slow shutter is a beautiful thing for wildlife photography. And again, it's totally predicated on how fast the movement is to what exact shutter speed is, as well as your vision, let's be frank. Like, do you want a lot of blur, a little blur? Where is the sweet spot for your artistic vision? But we're looking at probably one over 40 as kind of a starting point, maybe going a little bit faster, maybe going a little bit slower, or maybe going a lot slower. And then I rarely ever go

Below one tenth or one fifth of a second for wildlife movement. Otherwise, it tends to be just kind of a blurry mess. And then I'll underline the point is that this is not really for calm behavior. Like you don't really want, you can test this, you can experiment with it with an animal that's slowly moving its head or standing up from a sitting position. But what we're really talking about here is scenes where there are animals trotting or running or moving quickly, birds beating their wings, animals on a chase.

A cheetah chasing a gazelle across a savannah, try those slow shutters and they can be really beautiful. And with that, I mentioned in the last episode as well, is a great technique is to pair that where you actually pan with the wildlife. So you're keeping the wildlife in the center of your scene. It's not increasing in size or decreasing in size, meaning it's not going toward you or away from you. But if you can track that animal so it stays in your scene as you hit that slow shutter, the background gets all streaky and beautiful. And man, that is a way to get a

Yeah.

And the final setting we're going to talk about here is burst mode and potentially pre-record. So burst mode, I'm sure there's a lot of different ways you can describe this or a lot of different terminology for it, but it's essentially a high fast drive motor. So in just about every camera out there, they have different drive motor settings. And it's usually in a camera menu that looks like several rectangles or squares stacked on top of one another. It allows you to choose how many photos per second you're shooting as you hold that shutter down continuously.

And so this is a great technique for getting a series or a sequence of events if there is fast-moving wildlife.

And also, it's a great way to freeze wildlife movement if you're forced into a slow shutter when animals are gently moving. So if an animal is gently moving, like it's rolling around, or maybe a bird is flitting on a branch, there will absolutely be a moment where it's still. Maybe it's a half second, and for you to react to that in real time to take a single photo, almost impossible. But as that bird is hopping or the moose are munching or the polar bear is rolling around, if you can take a burst of 20 or 30 photos.

per second for a couple seconds, you will probably find that when that motion stops, you're gonna get a great shot of frozen motion, even at potentially slow shutter speeds, because again the behavior has slowed down in those couple of seconds and you get this series of shots and you also probably get some still frozen motion as well.

So that's burst mode. Pre-record is a this is a big game changer in wildlife photography. And this is kind of reserved for more of the elite kind of upper end cameras. I know the OM system has it on some of their cameras, Canon has it, I believe Sony and Nikon have it. but what this does is kind of brilliant. So there is internal camera memory such that when you hold the shutter down to focus your shot, it is actually

recording shots that you can tell it to actually save after the fact. So let me just give you an example rather than explain it. So imagine that I am trying to photograph a

leopard pouncing. Like I see the scene and there's a leopard and it's it's completely still, but I know that the photo I want is like the split second after it launches and uses those powerful hind legs to lurch forward. But

I don't know when that's gonna happen, and by the time my brain recognizes that this happened, if I take a single shot or even a burst shot, I'm probably too late. So what pre-record does is as you're holding focus with that shutter button,

It's actually recording about a half a second worth of photos at a high drive motor. So potentially it's storing the last half a second and 15 photos. So that way you actually are like going in a time machine and going back in time and recapturing those photos that you didn't get because you weren't fast enough to react. And I can't tell you how extraordinary the photos are that I can capture with this. Like I literally get a couple photos of the leopard sitting there, and then the next 10 photos are a sequence of it.

Lurching forward, and every single one of them is a different photo. The whiskers look different, the expression on its face looks different. You know, whether the teeth are exposed or not, what the paws are doing, and it's just incredible. So if you are looking to upgrade your camera system and you're trying to get into a pro-level setup, a lot of cameras, the pro versions are coming out with this concept, this technology of pre-record. I think OM Systems calls it pro mode, Canon calls it pre-record. I think most of the movie industry.

industry which which actually got into this earlier than the still photo industry they call it pre-record so so look for that and it can be an absolute game changer for your wildlife photography because you're you're capturing things that

That even the fastest brain, the fastest trigger finger wasn't able to record two, three years ago, you're now getting it so easily. And you know, I can go on and on with a list of examples like birds that are taking off from a branch, any sort of chase or a hunt, whales breaching or birds diving in water.

cats pouncing, you know, wild cats, really anything that has any sort of motion, you're kind of enabling a time machine and it is extraordinary.

So there you go, advanced techniques and advanced settings for really advancing your wildlife photography to pro level. Remember, the overall gist is that you're trying to create something different. You're trying to see things and capture things that people may not get to see. It might be because you're able to capture fast moving motion that is too fast for the brain to recognize. It might be because you're capturing a different time of day that most people don't see it, or you might just be capturing a single moment in time. In fact, that's really the most common way. You're capturing

That moment that the eye just glistens and twinkles, you're capturing it at a unique angle. So there's so many things here. This is a pretty deep dive into honestly, like a couple decades worth of my tip-top advice and my own personal learnings, things that I employ, fortunately, kind of by rote memorization by now. But if you are getting into photography, I hope that you picked up one or two or maybe 10 different things today because these are gonna absolutely level up your photography.

Yeah.

before you go, I just want to underline the point again about the editing example videos that I have on my YouTube channel. I think it's a really good compliment to the audio of this podcast. you know, not necessarily doing both at the same time, but being able to learn more about photography because again, editing is such an important thing. I often look at editing as kind of like the final leg of a four by one hundred.

Sprint relay race. So you think you know the first three legs, you got to have good fast people. It might be finding the lighting, it might be finding the moment, it might be finding the right composition. But then that last 25%, oftentimes what we find in these Olympic relay races is they always put their fastest, their best, and they sometimes make up a lot of lost time. Like the team that was losing are now winning because their ringer, their last person in the race, just is one of the best outside.

There, so do that with editing. Get really versed in it. It's amazing what you can rescue, it's amazing what you can improve, it's amazing how you can differentiate your photography, and just inject really great artistic vision. Remember, photography is art. so editing is a beautiful thing. I highly recommend checking out any editing tutorials you can get your hands on. But I have one for you that's easy, I'll put it in the show notes.

Just search my channel, Court Whelan on YouTube, and I hope to see you over there. And last but not least is that if you would like to ask any questions about this episode, if you have any comments, if you have any uncertainties, leave me a comment in any of my YouTube videos. I see all of them and I respond to all of them. It's really the best way to get a hold of me.

so I'd love to hear from you. If you have ideas for future episodes, drop those in the comments as well. And yeah, this is fun. Hope you learned something and looking forward to talking to you next time.


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Court Whelan

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