Rather than filling the frame with just the animal, include some of the terrain or location in which it resides. This establishes a sense of place and educates the viewer about where and how the subject dwells. Refrain from fully zooming the lens or getting too close. While it feels great that an animal trusts you to get close enough, it may not make the best image. By all means, get in tight and create the head shot as explained above, but learn to back off a bit a go wider. A more common flow of events is to progressively let the animal gravitate closer to you or slowly enter its world to get the head shot. Should this be the scenario, even as you’re getting closer, think about the perspective of the shot if while you were close, you went wide and get a unique

Ah, who said you can't go out and play in the rain with your camera? Especially when exploring a new camera, rain or shine is my motto! In fact, the overcast skies and slight darkness are a perfect time to learn a few tricks for shooting in low light.

I spotted these two amazing flowers while walking along a lake road—utterly glowing with color. Diffuse light (from overcast skies) is terrific for flowers as it evens out the light and produces rich saturated color. I opened my lens fully to ƒ2.8 and bumped up my ISO to 200 to get a 1/40th second shutter (right at the edge of being safely handheld).

I could have used ISO 400 for more stability, but didn't want more noise/grain as those petals should look velvety. Instead of faster ISOs, try this extra steadying technique

The environmental image tends to be more of a story teller as it denotes a sense of place. The head shot is powerful as it provides an up close and personal look at the species. Both have their place in wildlife photography and I strongly encourage you to capture both options. Regardless of the one you choose, adhere to the compositional rule of thirds.

For the head shot, the eyes should fall into the top third of the frame. For the environmental image, position key elements into the power points that constitute the position of a third to create balance and intrigue in your compositions.

Flat lighting is not the end all be all of a good photograph. By doing a simple levels correction in Photoshop, a flat image can be turned into a photograph with good contrast and nice lighting.

Lenses: Bring your longest lens and a macro. The long lens will be used to try and fill the frame with your subject. They can also be used to throw foreground bars out of focus when you place the lens right up to them and shoot with a wide open aperture. The macro will come in handy for the smaller animals who reside in the indoor exhibits behind glass. If the rules allow you to get right up to the glass, press the lens against it to eliminate as many reflections and as much glare as possible. The closer your subject is to it the better as it will allow you to fill the frame. Be sure you’re shooting in RAW as the image will take on the color of the glass. By shooting in RAW, this cast can be corrected more efficiently using Photoshop or other RAW editor of

Animals like anything else one photographs often benefit from the less is more approach. In this case at the Zoo i was photographing a large animal, and chose just to look at his (her) shadow. At first it is not clear what we are looking at. But that is part of the fun. Try looking over, under and behind the action for any assignment you find yourself photographing.

A very useful, and greatly utilized technique for professional location photographers is Daylight Fill Flash. This technique supposes there is ample light to photograph a scene, as one would expect when shooting in bright sunlight, but goes one step further by adding just the right amount of Fill Flash where it’s needed, primarily to brighten up the shadows. Looking at the photos above, shot by Denver DPA Instructor, Allen Birnbach, you can see before and after image samples of this technique. The left photo is shot using ambient light only. The right photo is the same exposure (same camera settings, shutter speed, aperture and ISO) but with the addition of flash into the photo. Using a large light source, a softbox with a powerful off-camera flash unit, Allen

I took these photos while working for an architect who specializes in exotic coastal homes in the Carmel / Big Sur, California area. They were not part of the assignment, but the area is so beautiful that it was hard to resist taking photographs on my one day off. I vividly remembered an area that I had photographed many years before while studying with the legendary Ansel Adams.

To the surprise of others, I continued to pack my photo gear despite the heavy fog and light rain. I knew that the tonal range of the white sea-foam and the dark water-saturated rock was hard to capture (that’s one reason why Ansel invented the Zone system).
 
As good luck would have it, the drizzle stopped and the fog pulled back, leaving a soft even canopy of cloud light – the perfect

To stop action in a bright room, or when shooting outside in daylight you need a fast shutter speed, 1/1000 of a second or higher depending on the subject. But to stop action in High Speed photography you need a Fast Flash Duration. Shutter Speed is the actual speed, the duration of time the camera shutter is open letting light hit the sensor. Flash Duration is the actual duration of time that the flash is lit. These are two very different things. Camera shutter speeds can be as high as 1/4000, or 1/8000 of a second, but flash duration speeds can be much faster, upwards of 1/10,000 of a second. These very fast flash duration speeds are what photographers use to freeze water droplets, or freeze the wings of a Hummingbird in flight. There are a number of factors that