The Secrets to Great Wildlife Photography

If you’re listening to this podcast, it’s probably safe for me to assume that you want to take great wildlife photographs. So what are the things you need to think about?

I’ve tried to run through an almost step-by-step guide based on my own recent experience of photographing wildlife in Zimbabwe, Australia and Finland.

Camera: Take the body and lens (possibly plural) that most suits your needs. And think about ancillary items; storage, battery charger, mains adaptors, USB chargers, cleaning kit, tripod and tripod head. A spray cover, if you have one, can be useful where there is a lot of fine dust and in wet environments.

Clothing: Where layers where appropriate, and think about other items such as sleeping bags if you’ll be spending time outside at night.

And finally… Inspiration!

Look at other photographers' work to get new ideas, and remember to look at what’s around you while you’re there. Is there anything you can use to make the background more interesting, or can you use the light to enhance your subject in some way?

For a more detailed guide, check out my book “A Brief Guide to Wildlife Photography” for more ideas.

It's time for another podcast...

Please take a look at the 2026 Wildlife Calendar. It's available now.

Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign hello and welcome to another podcast. Now, in this podcast, I'm going to dive into wildlife photography and some things to talk about. Now, I have spoken about wildlife photography pretty regularly as it's really what this podcast or one of the key things that this podcast is about. So I assume that's why you're listening. And also it's, it's the, the kind of photography that I really love doing. And there are certain reasons for that. I guess the main one is it's quite challenging. And I think pretty much every time you go out, you never know what you're likely to see. So there's that feeling of kind of on the spot, you need to come up with ideas and compositions and ways to create images that stand out even if you don't do anything with them. And here I'm speaking more broadly, not just for myself, but I'm assuming for anybody who's interested in, wildlife photography. You want to be shooting images that you get a real buzz from when you look at them. So that's one aspect of it. And also there's just staying on top of things technically. So which mode you need to be in? should you be thinking black and white or color? what's the lighting like? Do you have to keep changing? So there are a lot of unique challenges. Well, not perhaps totally unique, but there are certainly a lot of challenges to wildlife photography. And that's why I think it's such a rewarding thing to do. So before I dive into that, just a reminder to like and subscribe, please, I was looking at my YouTube, listeners numbers statistics that I get, ah, the other day and something like over 90% of the people who listen to the podcast are not subscribers. So if that's you, please just hit the subscribe button. I really appreciate it. It helps me, to carry on doing this. Okay, so let's get to it though. So now I have spoken about a lot of this stuff before and also I will point out that there is an ebook available on my website at a very reasonable price that will take you through a lot of the things to think about. And it goes into quite a lot of detail about the kind of things to think about if you're planning a wildlife photography, trip, or shoot. And it certainly goes into a lot more detail than I can do on a podcast. And I'll also refer you back to my DSLR mirrorless training course because that also will take you through the camera aspects, certainly the kind of things you need to think about with the camera, but also go through things like composition, how to get mood, that kind of thing. So I think they're fairly comprehensive and I certainly, would recommend you at some point just jump off the podcast and have a look at those. So what do you need to think about though, if you are planning your trip? So the biggest thing I think to do is research. If there was one thing to really focus on, I would say it'd be research. And what I mean by that is making sure you understand when the animals will be around. It may be certain times of year, they might also move around a bit. So the example I often give is if, you want to go and photograph humpback whales off the coast of Sydney, they're only around for six months. So you do need to get hit the right six months, otherwise it can be quite, a disappointing trip. And other things to think about are the kind of behaviors, the kind of environments, what's the lighting going to be like, what's your access to the animals, Are you in a vehicle of some sort? So are you in a boat? Are you in a 4x4? Are you walking? And when you are with the animals, when you are in the field, what are the kind of things you need to be conscious of, not only technically as far as the photography goes, but also for your own safety. So again, I always recommend that you use a local guide, to a local operator, who is ethical and knows what they're doing. because, for example, and I've shared this story quite often, when I was photographing gorillas in Uganda, mountain gorillas in Uganda. Ah, one, I was on foot. We'd been actually hiking for about three hours to get to them. And when we were with them, we're just in the forest, on the forest floor with them. And a young male ran at me. And fortunately we've been briefed about that because it is a behavior that they do. It's to do with establishing social status and all that kind of thing. If, you think young males with a lot of testosterone, that's the kind of stuff that happens. And I knew what to do. So it was, I'm not going to say I was totally relaxed about the whole thing because, he was pretty big and powerful and but because I knew what to do, I just did what I was told to do, which was to not make eye contact, stare at the ground, and then sooner or later the gorilla will go away. So it is really important that you understand what to do, to stay safe. And I would actually put that above your photography skills because if you, if you go to these places, you want it to be an experience that you remember and you treasure and remember it for all the right reasons, not because you came back, you know, missing an arm or something like that. So do your research. Make sure you're, when you're in the field with animals, that you're with somebody who knows what they're doing. and in that way they can keep you safe. Not only that, but they can teach you about the animals and teach you how to track the kind of things to look for, to listen for. So, for example, the thing that often I think gets overlooked because when we think about tracking, we think about spore, which is, the traces that animals leave behind. footprints might, be dung, might be broken vegetation, it might be marks in the ground, maybe where they've been sleeping, that sort of thing. But something else that is just as important is understanding the environment. And one of the. So when I was in India and we were tracking, tigers, looking for tigers, one of the things we listened for were alarm calls from, some of the deer that lived there. So they have a very distinctive, almost a bark as an alarm call. But obviously as soon as you hear that, you know that there is a tiger in the vicinity. So these are the kind of things that in my opinion, add a lot more depth to the experience. And, you could sit in a bus and get told nothing and just look out of the window and hey, there's an elephant, there's an elephant or there's a lion or whatever. But to me, wildlife photography, and I think the best wildlife photographers, wildlife photography is about creating some sort of connection with the animal. And in order to do that, you've really got to understand them, you've got to do your research. It's like connecting with a person. How do you connect with a person? Well, you learn about them. Normally we would do that by having a conversation with them, learning about their likes, dislikes. maybe there's information online that can get a bit creepy, but you know what I mean? And that that's probably where you're going to go with wildlife. You're probably looking at information that's available online, but maybe people are sharing stories, maybe there are podcasts. and I did a series a little while ago now about different types of animals. So I just do a, a podcast on one type of animal and just share some background information about that animal. And if that's Something that is useful, I'm happy to carry on doing those. So research, absolutely important. Probably the most important thing you can do after that it comes down to your ability with your camera. And what gear you use is likely in most cases to be what you have. Now, because honestly if you're looking to hire gear, it's so expensive and the companies that I've looked at, mostly in Australia, you've got a, minimal renting period which is often several months. And if you start looking at the weekly rate or the monthly rate to rent this gear, in the end there's not that much difference to buying the gear yourself. Certainly if you start looking at second hand gear then that might be the way to go. But the chances are you'll be using what you've got at the moment. So what you do, the obvious answer is to practice and just shoot in as many different environments as you can. And really I'm thinking more about the lighting. So it might be different times of day, it might be in different weathers. So where you're going, it might be bright sunshine most of the time or you might have a lot of rain or you might have a real mixture. So it's really important to get to know your camera really well in as many different situations as you can. And in that way you using the camera becomes second nature. You don't have to think about too much about what settings you're going to use, which mode you're going to use. Are you using aperture priority, shutter speed? What's most important for that shot? Is it depth of field? Is it freezing the action? Is it creating blur? what about your composition? Is it a tight shot? Is it a really close focus, portrait shot of the animal? Or are you showing that animal in its environment? Are you showing a behavior, what's the story? So think visual storytelling. I'm not going to talk about that in this podcast because I've spoken about it quite a lot in other podcasts and it's pretty fundamental to my approach to photography as well. But have a think about that and practice as much as you can. And the reason I say that is that once you go, once you're in the field, this is not the time to be learning things about your camera. You, you don't want to be trying to remember how to set up a particular setting. And it's part of it is to allow you to enjoy the whole experience a lot more. but another reason for doing is it doing it is that it reduces if you like the decision making overhead that you're running with when you're doing your photography. So if you think about it, for any kind of shoot, you always have to make decisions about maybe which lens to use. If it's a zoom lens, how far do you want to zoom in or zoom out? what's your composition, what's, how do you want to set your lighting? What are you exposing to? Is it the animal's eye, which is what I would normally expose to, but it might be something else. lots of other things to think about. If it's wet, how do you keep your gear dry? All those kind of things. How do you stay safe, dry, comfortable, whatever it might be. Do you want to be operating in a hide, that you know, this is another possibility. So get really familiar with using your camera and you might be lucky enough to have local wildlife that you can photograph. And that might be a fairly straightforward thing to set up. Or it may be a short trip away, maybe weekends, but you can, you can do it enough times to get the level of familiarity you need with your equipment to be shooting confidently. But if you don't have access to wildlife, then photograph birds. Shoot birds in flight with your camera obviously, but, photograph birds. Try and get them with something in the background, ideally flying across the front of buildings, things like that. And the reason I say that is that you need to really learn how your autofocus works. If you're using autofocus, which most of us do, how the exposure, system on your camera works, how do you get the correct exposure? How you need to understand how this all works. And you need to be understanding without thinking about it because it's no good getting an image that's very sharp but is so overexposed or underexposed that it's barely usable. That's not what you want. So the thing to do is to do all of this while you have time. When you have time to practice. The next thing I like to do is to think about environment. I'm just having a quick slurp there because I think I'm getting, having a bit of hay fever today. So think about the environment and think about your impact on the environment. If you're like me and most, I would say most, maybe all serious wildlife photographers, they're very conscious of the environment. A lot of what they do relates to conservation and sharing the stories of these animals with other people so that people care. we don't conserve what we don't care about. So one, of the important things about conservation photography is shooting images that really grab people's imagination, and that they can really connect with the animal. They feel something when they look at that image. So for one thing, you need to respect the environment. So it's take any photographs, leave any footprints. But also it comes back to your skill as a photographer, your ability to create images where the viewer really connects with the animal. And the secret there, frankly, is to shoot the eyes. We connect with others through our eyes. So if you think of perhaps really intimate moments with someone, the chances are you were looking eye to eye. And if you think about people that you wouldn't particularly trust, one aspect of that often is that they don't like making eye contact, you know, and we wonder what's going on there. So eye contact is really important. And if you can get that in a shot with an animal, that allows the viewer to really just look at that image for as long as they want to look at it and feel a real connection with that animal. And that is a really important aspect of conservation photography. So think about the environment and think about your composition, as I've already said. And another aspect of composition is color, black and white. How are you going to do that? Do you want to do. How do you want to work your, saturation? So a lot of wildlife photography winners tend to over saturate their images a little bit, so they become a lot more striking because they've got very striking pictures. As a photographer, that isn't always the, the most attractive aspect of it. They can look a little bit fake, but there you go. So it's whatever again, it comes down to whatever you like. It's whatever floats your boat. Because you want to be shooting photographs that you're pleased with, you don't want to be shooting technically excellent photographs that you absolutely hate. There's not really much point doing that. So do think about composition and do your research into other people's photographs. Now, I'm going to mention a few photographs here, so I just looked up a few. So if you do underwater photography, which is a whole other discipline, it's something I used to do, quite a few years ago now. but it is amazing. And I think the amazing thing about underwater photography, and I used to. I only did it with film cameras, really, seriously. but the thing about it is you're in a different environment. It's. If you've never been underwater, if you've never dived, scuba dived, anything like that, it is a very different environment to be in. It's an alien environment and you can shoot amazing photographs that if you think about it, I don't know most people, I don't know what proportion of the population scuba dives or snorkels does that kind of thing. But you're certainly opening up another aspect of our planet, the largest part in fact, to people who may have no direct experience of it. And therefore you're showing them a new world. So there are a couple of photographers, Shane Gross I believe. G R O, double S. Who is the, or what's the Winner of the 2024 Wildlife Photographer of the Year, competition. And I had a look at his work and there's some amazing work there. And also Lauren Balester, who's a French photographer who also has won Wildlife Photographer of the Year, ah several times. And he is another person who shoots really amazing underwater photographs. So you may well have favorite photographers of your own, but always have a look at them, have a look at their work. Particularly competition winners I find are always worth having a look. If I'm in London and the M. If there's a Wildlife Photographer of the Year, gallery open, I'll always go to have a look at it. And also in in Sydney, I'll go and have a look wherever they, they might be. Because it's always good to see other people's work and it's always. I always find it interesting to see which work wins competitions and if there's any particular reason why that work won. I'm not a big one for entering competitions mostly because I forget, so that's where I'm less organized. But you can get some great ideas not only about composition but also the use of color, the use of black and white, the use of backlighting. So once you start getting into composition, there's many, many things you can think about and you need to be ready if the situation presents itself. So things like going out just after dawn where there might be a lot of mist, you've got the sun backlighting your subject. That can be incredibly atmospheric. But you've got to be ready for it if that sort of situation presents itself. Now I had a look at a couple of other photographers as well. Franz Lanting is another photographer who does amazing work. he's been around for quite a while and he does a variety. So there's wildlife photographs, land based. There's ah, I saw some humbug whale pictures, humpback Whales feeding, but also landscapes. So when you're away, you might, I mean you might be primarily there to photograph wildlife, but why not grab whatever's going and shoot some landscapes as well? anything else that you have the opportunity to do. Maybe some astro. so have a, have a think, don't get too blinkered, when you, if you are particularly trip that you're, you're doing where you may not get the opportunity to do it again, or at least not for some time, think about all the other kinds of photographs you can take while you're there. Because if you're not, if you don't see any animals, and it could well be that you've gone to see a particular animal and it's just been incredibly shy and unhelpful, then you've got a plan B, you've got other photographs you can take and you may well come back with work that you're really proud of and really pleased with, but not something you ever thought about, you ever considered before you left. So keep your options open. And this is when knowing your camera and knowing your gear is really important because you can, you know, change lanes very easily and very quickly and be ready to shoot something else. And I'm going to mention a couple of other wildlife photographers who I've had on, my podcast. So Suyesh Kishari was on, a few months ago now, back in February, and I'm recording this on the 1st of May, 2025. And Suyash has some amazing work. And also he's got. The one aspect of his work is that he's shot documentary, video, type stuff as well. So if you are not just looking at stills, but looking at, movie, then he may well be worth a look. Or I'm sure there are, you know, there's lots of people to look at. And also Carolina Noree, she is on Instagram, very prolific on Instagram. And I had a chat to her back in 2023 and she's got a very interesting story. she's a Swedish lady who now lives in South Africa and takes people out to photograph animals, wildlife. And she actually went to South Africa because she liked horses and then absolutely, fell in love with wildlife in South Africa. And look, there are lots and lots of wildlife photographers out there and by all means have a look at their work. Have a look at mine if you. You're very welcome. Feel free to buy some. but the important thing is to get inspiration when you can, where you see Something you really like, a, particular style of photography you like, then that's something to always keep in the back of your mind if the opportunity should arise. When you're looking for something, the chances are you're more likely to find it, I believe. So get, some ideas, have a look around, and then when you do go, make sure that you, you're ready for different opportunities or different situations that may present themselves. And the final thing I just want to say, and it's something I do say often, but don't forget you've got your smartphone camera. So I do use my smartphone quite a lot. I tend to use it more for landscapes. I like using panorama mode. I use it for video. So smartphones these days are very good for video. And I find holding my DSLR and trying to shoot video, particularly with the 100 400mm lens on it, it's really hard to keep it stable. If I'm hand holding it, I really have to have it resting on something. smartphones, definitely not. They're really easy to use. So that's something I, I don't shoot a lot of video. Possibly, could shoot more, but I've only got two hands, two arms, and normally there's a DSLR in, in at least one of them. And that's what I like to shoot. Okay, so that is really what I wanted to share with you. Just some thoughts about wildlife photography. And really I think the, the secrets, if you follow, if you go through those steps, go through the, the planning, think, about what you want to shoot. Get lots of practice in so you really know your gear. think about plan B, possibly plan C. If you don't see what you're hoping to see. If you approach wildlife photography that way, and it's essentially been open to learning, it's being really open to learning, being open to whatever presents itself. And that I think is really important with wildlife photography. if you do that, I think that you've got a good chance of having a very enjoyable shoot and you may well come up with some work that you would never have imagined, before you left. So on that note, thank you for listening. please, like, subscribe all the other good stuff and I'll speak to you in the next podcast. Bye for now. Well, I hope you enjoyed that. Now, I just want to say thank you for tuning in and joining me in, the Wildlife and Adventure Photography podcast. If you have enjoyed today's episode, please give me a, like a subscribe, maybe tell your friends. Subscribe and by all means, leave a comment. And if there is a subject you would like me to cover in the future, please let me know. And I'll, be very happy to do my best. So thanks again for joining, me, and I look forward to seeing you again. Next podcast. Bye for now.