Mastering Wildlife Photography Part 3: How to Use Light to Capture Wildlife at Its Best

This episode is about using light. Using it well can make the difference between a magical shot and one that is flat and uninteresting. Here's what I'll cover in this episode:

•  The Role of Light in Wildlife Photography 
•  Golden Hours & Blue Hours
• Midday Light Challenges
• Backlighting, Side Lighting & Front Lighting 
• Weather & Light Conditions 
• Camera Settings for Light 

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Next time, we’ll talk about how to photograph subjects that are moving fast.

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Transcript

>> Graham: 0:08

Foreign welcome to episode three of this mini series. So last time we looked at how to get close to animals, but now we're into the really important thing, which is how to photograph them. So the first thing we're going to look at, and this will be the subject of this episode, is how you use light to capture wildlife subjects, ah, at their best. And obviously light is what photography is all about. Because if you, photography itself or photograph comes from the Greek meaning, light writing or light drawing. So this is pretty fundamental stuff. So key things here are to really work from what we've already looked at and that is the research. Because at, different times of day, you, you obviously have different qualities of light. And that also depends very much on the weather. So in the first episode we actually spoke about research and part of that, if you remember, was to look at when your subject animal, the animal you're really going after, when is it most active? So some animals are, active during the day. Some tend to be more active at dusk or at dawn. Some are active at night. So if they're active at night, that can give you additional problems because there's simply not much light around. And I never recommend using flash, when you're photographing wildlife. I have a flash. If I don't have a flash, can I gave it away because I wasn't using it. So let's look at how you use natural light. And I'm going to go into, the different types of light you have available. So when you're using light itself, and this applies to any photograph, the quality of the light, the strength of the light, the direction of it, has a big impact on things like mood, on the drama of, a particular photograph. And it plays a big part in the storytelling role. So I, will talk about storytelling in another episode. But if you've listened to me before, you know I like to refer to photography as, and photographers as being visual storytellers. So the kind of things I'm talking about here, and I'll expand on, in this episode, are things like silhouettes catching the light in eyes particularly. So if you think about it, any portrait, and if you're trying to do animal portraits, any portrait you do, you make connection with the subject through their eyes. So you really want the eyes to be lit as far as possible. And that can be quite tricky in a natural environment because often animals are trying to keep their eyes out of direct sunlight, just as we do, because you're blinded by it. And obviously for wildlife is really important that they can see what's around them because this could mean literally the difference between life, life and death for them. So how do you get light in the eyes? And the quick answer is you can't always. So it's something to bear in mind and it's something to be very watchful for. It's one of the things you're looking at as you start to set up that photograph, as you're looking either through your viewfinder or looking at the, image on the back of the camera. And then you're looking at other things like, the tones on animals, fur, for example. And here again, you can think a little bit about the end result. It's always good to start with the end in mind as a good phrase to use and think about how that final image is going to look. And what are you going for? Are you going for a particular look in terms of color saturation, that kind of thing? Are you trying to get a real connection between the viewer and the animal? how do you want to compose and m with the composition you're choosing? How does that impact the light? And what I mean by that is the lighting on the animal itself and also background lighting and foreground lighting. How does that all come together to create a coherent image that conveys something of the animal to the person who's looking at it, who may have never seen the animal, at least in that sort of situation before. So going back to when the animal is most active, that will be a, ah, big factor in the lighting that you're dealing with. So let's look at, some situations. So the first one is golden hour. So there are actually two of them and they happen. They're basically the hour immediately after sunrise. So when the sun is in the sky above the horizon, in other words, that's the first gold. Now that's one in the morning. And then it's that, last hour while the sun is just going down. So the hour before it disappears below the horizon. So that's the golden hour. and the characteristics of Golden Hour is that you have much softer light. As the name implies, you have a golden hue. You might have more oranges and yellows, and they will show as a tint, on, on the animal, on your subject and also what's around. Quite often it's quite a warm light and it can add to the drama and it can certainly make the image more m. More atmospheric. And depending on what floats your boat, it might be a much nicer image for you. Now, one of the advantages, of Gold now is that often a lot of animals are more active around those times. So if you are photographing land animals, often you'll find that in golden hour, as you start getting near sunset particularly, but also sunrise, you'll find animals are more active. Obviously, from a photography perspective, the thing you need to be very wary of is how sensitive you need to set your ISO. Because the amount of light available is going to change quite rapidly during golden hours, either going down or increasing. And where we can get caught out as photographers, if we're not consciously checking it, is that if you think of our own visual system, the combination, of our eyes and our brains, we compensate for changes in light. So our iris is open to let more light in or they close if it's starting to get brighter and we're not aware of that happening. This is a subconscious function of our own visual system. But obviously on a camera it's not doing that unless you're in full auto mode, which hopefully, if you're listening to this, you won't be. So that means that you're going to have to start compensating generally with ISO. And I say that because the other variables with the exposure triangle, particularly, your aperture, which is a big driver on, you know, how much light you're letting in. That's what it essentially controls. But it also controls depth of field. So depending on the kind of image you're trying to shoot, you may need a certain depth of field. If it's a narrow depth of field, then you're going to have, a large aperture opening, which means something like, F2 would be a good one. For example, just one of those low F numbers. if it's getting brighter, then you're going to have to maybe start pushing up to, a higher number. F8, F11, F22, whatever it might be. And as you increasing those numbers, the physical aperture in the lens is getting smaller. Now that impacts your depth of field. It starts to make it longer. Now that might be good, it might not be. But this is where understanding the exposure triangle is really important. When you're, doing this kind of photography, when you're in these situations where the light levels are changing quite rapidly and you need to be able to compensate. So if you're going for a particular shutter speed and depth of field combination, then the only variable you have against that is to M is to change the ISO to either make your camera, more sensitive or less sensitive to the available light. So this is where this stuff comes in and it's very practical and it's something you really need to master, so that you're not having to work it out but you're just changing it as that light level changes. Now the other one is the blue hour. So this is very similar. So the blue hour, the two of those as well. So the first one is the hour before sunrise. So when the horizon is starting to get lighter because the sun is coming up but it's not yet broken the horizon. So you get that gradually, relatively rapidly increase in the available light. And again that can give you a different kind of feel. It is bluer as the name implies, as opposed to gold now which is more golden. So again it's, it's quite a subtle change. it's obviously much, much darker. But again you can use that to create atmosphere and you can use that to create a real feel to the images. And again, obviously there's another blue hour when the sun has gone below the horizon. You've now got another hour where there is light, it's still light, but that light is diminishing fairly rapidly. Now having said all of that, if you're in latitudes, and this would primarily be in the northern hemisphere, so for example I was in Finland recently and in summer, so it's light for much of the night. You do. It does get dark at night. When I was, when I was there it did. But you have m much longer periods into the day where you've got light that you can use for photography. But you are constantly having to vary the ISO, which of course also makes things grainier, as you increase the ISO. So there are trade offs here. Some of that you can recover in post processing, whether you're using Photoshop or something more specialized or lightroom, whatever. But just be aware that again for the wildlife that you want to photograph, when are they active and what are the implications of the time of day they're active, particularly if, if it is around the golden hour, blue hour or you know, those, those periods of the day. So that's the first one. And what do you need to do? Well really the key thing is that if you want to take advantage of those conditions, it's certainly important to be there before that light change starts to happen because it happens relatively quickly. And it's also important to scout out the locations ideally a day or two before so that the light available hasn't changed. You know that after a certain point you know you're going to have a certain Time where you have, a usable amount of light for the camera gear you have and the subject you're trying to shoot. And maybe also pick a good spot to use so that you're making the most of the available light. So you're probably not going to be shooting into where the sun is, although you might. So I'm going to come on to that in a moment. it's certainly true though that if you can make use of gold now, and I used it in the morning with whale photographs, because in Sydney, the sun comes up over the ocean, obviously in the evening goes down over land. So from Sydney you're on the east coast of Australia and the sun is coming up in the east. So, that means that's when you're. You can use the sun and the sea if you want to make use of that if you get the opportunity. Because it obviously depends on your relative position with the whale in this case and what's going on in the background. But I love to get whales with the shoreline behind them. So there are cliffs as you come out of Sydney, north and South Head, they're cliffs. And if you've got that orangey light on them, it gives it a really nice hue. And again, I've done this many times in, places like Africa. And that orange light can bring out giraffes, but also the vegetation. Even in India, I was at a pool which was very, very still. There was a big antelope on the other side of the pool. We were in golden hour. And that golden hue. There are also trees there. So there's reflection of the green in the, in the water, plus the sort of golden light on the animal. So you can create these amazingly, atmospheric images if you get into. But you have to be in position to do it. Okay. So they're the, the two hours where you can make use of the really a more ideal lighting for photography. However, a lot of the time you're not going to be able to make use of, the gold now, particularly for whatever reason. So the things to be aware of, if you're somewhere where there's quite harsh sunlight, where there's a lot of strong sunlight and you're photographing around midday, then that is very different because obviously you're now looking at very harsh light. And what that tends to do is blow out the highlights. So you're going to be lightly overexposing or close to overexposing on the highlights. you're going to have very harsh Contrast. So if there's shade, that's going to likely be very dark compared to the sunlit areas. Now an example of that, where you can maybe work with it a little bit, is when I was photographing tigers, we were in a forest area and shooting around midday. So the tigers, when I was there were actually active most of the day or at least moving around and you could see them. So this was in, February, that I was there. And what you've got though, in the middle part of the day where the sun is quite high is you've got these bands of light. So where the light is coming between the trees and hitting the ground directly, it's obviously very bright. But where it's hitting trees and it's creating shadow, those shadow, those shadows can be quite dark. So the dynamic range is quite wide. What I mean by that is the difference between the bright areas and the dark areas. It's quite a, big difference. So what do you do there? Well, if you're photographing the tiger, for example, it's walking between these areas. What I would tend to do, I would wait until the tiger's face was in the sunlight and I'd try and expose against the nearest eye to me, because that meant. And again, coming back to this point, about what are you photographing? I'll talk about m more about this actually in the portrait episode. But you want to shoot the eye and therefore the lighting needs to be an exposure really needs to be set around the eye and then you can work with the rest of the image in post if it's not quite right for you. So what can you do if you're working in harsh sunlight? first we'll look for shade and things that naturally diffuse. So, again, coming back to trees, if you just have a leaf canopy that's not too dense, it can create a nice shade for you. And animals will often, in the middle of the day, want to go there anyway. So that will diffuse the light and it actually gives you a much more even light. So that can work well for you. you might want to just use the light and shoot with backlit subjects. So this also applies to Golden Hour. I mentioned about. You probably wouldn't want to be photographing into the sun, but maybe you will, because if you want to shoot silhouettes, they also can be effective. And, I remember my first time in Victoria Falls. We were heading back to base. We were in golden hour. And there were some animals, particularly, kudu actually, which is a large antelope. And we Were just perfectly positioned with this antelope had the sun behind it. There was still enough light reflecting onto the side of the animal that was facing me that it wasn't totally in silhouette. But what that light was doing, it created kind of a hue around the animal and all these little hairs that make up the fur, you could see them all around the, the profile of the animal. And that, that was really quite amazing. And it's one of my favorite shots. I did stop shooting when the, this animal relieved itself. Although the color was amazing, it wasn't quite what I was going for. but you get the idea. It's the same as using any light source. Think about how you can make use of it. How can you make more dramatic images, more engaging images? And, backlighting is definitely a good one. the other thing about harsh conditions, look also for reflections. So that might be water, it might be snow. Can you make use of natural, reflecting objects? Let's say, use them as reflectors, which might give you a more even exposure on the animal itself. So sometimes though, it's just not good to be photographing in midday. And frankly, when I've been in places where, particularly when it's very hot, that's time to just get some lunch, have a nip, a. Ah, nip a nap. Have a nap and have a bit of a rest. So that might be what happens during the middle of the day. Moving on to general lighting. So I've spoken about backlighting. the other things to look for are things like side lighting. So they can. Side lighting is great for emphasizing textures and shapes. So for example, on an elephant, the elephant's hide is, quite rugged and there's a lot of texture in there. And so a side lighting can really emphasize that. And what I tend to look for as well is just looking where the animal's head is. And as it's turning its head, I'm looking. So I'll be taking photographs where the lighting is starting to highlight the. The sort of bumps and ridges that make up the animal's head so that the. You get the feeling of the texture of the head, the depth to the head. It makes it more of a 3D looking image. When the lighting is really picking up on, features on the head that are just trapping light and they give you a. As a viewer, you can see you get more of a feel for the depth and the shape of the head and the contours of the head. So side lighting is very good. And it's something to look out for. front lighting is good as well. It's probably the best maybe for getting the eye of the animals. So having the animal, the actual eye itself lit up, getting good lighting. the downside is though, it can appear flat and unless you're using it in gold. Now that's great for front lighting, which is again why I'm saying you probably would want the sun behind you to make it take advantage of that. It's one opportunity and one option that you have. but otherwise front lighting, particularly where it's very strong, harsh light that can make everything very, very flat, you might burn out features as I said before. And if honestly the animals tend to squint. You know, we naturally squint in bright sunlight even if the sun isn't directly in our face. So that can make it harder to get good eye contact with the, with the animal. So the thing to think about is how you position yourself relative to the sun depending on what time of day you're shooting, the quality of the light and the kind of shot that you want to go for. Now the other thing that will definitely impact the lighting is the weather. So if you want to shoot portraits, the best type of weather is when it's cloudy and overcast because you get a much more even lighting. The dynamic range is quite low. So the difference between the darkest and lightest parts of the image tend to be quite, quite low. And because you don't have these really this really harsh light, often people's eyes will be more open and animals eyes will be more open. So it's easier to get those shots that connect with the eye. You can always work with the lighting in post processing if you want, and also saturation if you want to bring that. If the initial image looks a bit flat, but you've got that connection with the eye, then you can always work within post to make that image look more alive. So that's an option that you have. we have mist M and fog. Again that's brilliant because it adds to atmosphere and mood. So you'll typically get that particularly early in the morning if it's cold, when the dew point is low. So that you, you'll tend to get these just foggy, this fog available. And then if you can get shots with animals and again depending on the lighting where the sun is, if it's a ground kind of mist, ground fog and the sun is already starting to burn it off, you can get a great combination of the fog, maybe animals in the fog, how they're lit. You can get really good atmospheric shots making use of that. Rain, and snow will also have their own pros and cons. They can definitely add drama to the image, but you do need to be prepared for working in those conditions. Wind is another one, so it can give movement. And I've certainly shot some very dramatic humpback whale breaches in rough conditions where it's very windy. so if you're on land you might get branches, moving leaves. If you're able to get away with a slightly longer exposure, if the animal itself is sat perfectly still, then that's another thing to experiment with. just try getting the, the animals still with the movement in the background or foreground if there are leaves or anything else that's moving in the wind. So generally to get some movement in your image and I'm going to talk about shutter speed more in things the next episode. But you just think about it in terms of thousands of a second, thousandths of a second will freeze the action, hundreds will sort of freeze it, but allows some movement. And then when you get slower than that then you're looking at ah, a lot of movement in the image. So just work with that. And again, if you're not sure, just experiment with it before you go, before you go away, just photograph cars is a good one at different shutter speeds and look at the difference. Okay. And then the final thing is just camera settings. So again I've already spoken about a lot of these. You do need to just understand the exposure triangles so that interaction between shutter speed, aperture and ISO and then depending on where your priorities are for a particular shot, adjust accordingly. And I've already spoken about the you know, really the. The what the different settings in each of those, contribute, when you are in a bright situation, I would tend to expose for the highlights, particularly if it's in a part of the image that you want. as I've said, I tend to go for the animal's eye but if that's not visible, I'll tend to shoot around that area of the face. So that might be a highlight but again you need to think about the final image. You can correct a lot of things in post, but you have to be shooting in RAW to do that. So if you're shooting in jpeg, you won't have as much opportunity to edit the image. And when you do edit it, it might not quite come out the way you would want. So yeah, they're the main tips you might want to use. Exposure compensation. I, would definitely practice with that before using it. so exposure compensation, allows you to under or overexpose by a certain number of stops. Normally depend on your camera, and normally it's thirds of a stop. But it'll depend on the camera you're using. I would only. I only tend to use that if I know that I consistently over the shoot. I'm going to want to deliberately underexpose or overexpose against what the normal metering is giving me. So that's something that I would suggest needs a bit more experience to use effectively. Okay. And that is it. So, what have we covered? Well, really time of day. You'll know when the best times of day are for your subject because you've done some research. Golden Hour is definitely one of my favorites because I think it gives the best combination of lighting and feel, and also allows you to work with backlighting and silhouettes. But in a way where there's still ambient lighting around. equally you might want to go for really hard silhouettes, and shoot into the light. So that's your choice. Think about using shade, using cloud, using the weather to your advantage. Just to get a bit more creative in the images that you are producing. Experiment with different light, directions as I've already spoken about. So look at the side as well in the front. See what that can do for you. You really need to be conscious of your settings, particularly where the light is starting to change quite rapidly, which it will do after sunrise, coming up to sunset. So you must be thinking about that and maybe occasionally take test shots or at least look at, I tend to use aperture priority, so I check in the viewfinder what the shutter speed is going to be and then that, and I do a constant check on that. And then I'm constantly adjusting my ISO to keep the shutter speed in the range I want. Four, the depth of field that I'm running with. And finally be patient because great light is definitely worth waiting for. Now there is a link to the the ebook which will be there again and then in the next episode. So in episode four I'm going to talk a lot more about really. Shutter speeds are primarily about how you work, with animals that are moving fast, particularly where you don't have time or it's really hard to use autofocus to get the focus right and get everything else right. So you get a really nice sharp image. So we're going to talk more about that. if you want to leave, a comment, maybe talk about some of your work, maybe, just talk about your favorite, images where you've used lighting conditions like this, or even share the image. you're very welcome to do that. And, please remember to like and subscribe because that always helps. And that's it. So thanks very much for listening. I hope you found that useful and I will 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 and, 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.