Why you should become an urban wildlife photographer

A major part of a successful wildlife photography experience is preparation. Doing the right preparation can make the difference between having a great experience and a frustrating one. The problem is that most of us do not have access to wildlife every day, or do we?

Getting to know your own area and the wildlife in it can give you access to all the wildlife you need to become confident when you do travel for your big trip. Most of us have our eyes wide open when we visit a new place, but it's almost the opposite in our home environment.

Getting to know our own environment involves much the same steps we need to take for a successful wildlife trip. This includes local research and getting hands-on practice with our camera gear, and understanding what it is and isn’t capable of.

Listen to more on the podcast.

The organisations I mentioned are: 

• iNaturalist
• eBird

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 again and welcome to another podcast. Now, I was having a conversation with somebody yesterday about how to prepare for a wildlife photography trip. Now, this is something I've spoken about before, but it got me thinking about, other ways you can prepare. So what we're going to look at in this podcast is how you can shoot in your local area and what the benefits are of doing that. So just to get started, for most of us, if we're thinking of doing some sort of a wildlife photography trip, might be a safari, might be something else. The chances are we're not going to do that very often. It might be once in a lifetime thing. So whatever the situation is, we want to get the best results we can while we're there. And the best way to set yourself up for success in, that sort of situation is to practice. But it's important to know what to practice with and what to practice on. And that's what I'm going to talk about in, this podcast. So I'm going to talk about photographing in your local area. And there are two reasons for doing that. So obviously one is basic preparation. And the kind of preparation that you're going to be doing to shoot in your local area is pretty much the same that you would do if you were going on, a safari somewhere or some other event where you're going out of your normal area. But secondly, it teaches you to start seeing what's around you. And this is, if anything, probably more important than knowing your gear. because when we go somewhere new, what are we doing? We're looking around, we see new sights, there are new sounds, there are new smells. It's almost a complete. Well, it is a completely immersive experience, being somewhere new. And that's part of the attraction for travel for a lot of people. It can also be a little bit overwhelming. And if you are trying to, focus on your photography, it can be a bit of a distraction. So you really need to have your photography skills down so you don't have to particularly think about them, you just do them. But also, if you think about it, when you go somewhere and your eyes are wide open, you're taking in everything. Now, if you take that back to your own environment, what generally happens? Now, I'm not going to say that you walk around like a phone zombie, but, I think for a lot of people, probably not far off, the point I'm making is that when we're in our own environment, we tend to not look so much, or possibly at all at what's around. So this is another benefit of doing this kind of preparation. So I'm going to talk about urban wildlife and what I mean by that is the kind of wildlife that you will see in your everyday. And I'm going to assume that you live in a city or in a town, but somewhere where you don't have access to, to what most of us think of when you mention the term wildlife. So what are the things to do? The first thing is research. And if you've listened to other podcasts about wildlife photography, you'll know that research is the first big step that you can take. And what I mean by that is looking at the kinds of animals that you will see. Now if you're going away, normally there will be certain species that you want to see, certain activities maybe you want to see. So if it's humpback whales, for example, you might want to see breaching. So you need to understand, understand how that works, how quickly they happen. Are there any signs that a particular behavior is about to happen? So all of this comes through research and if you can get access to, ah, maybe animals directly, if you're able to go to a zoo, if the kind of behavior you're looking for might happen there, or look at video documentary, that kind of thing. So what happens in your own environment though, the chances are that you're not looking for one particular species. Maybe you're not even aware of which species are local to you. So this is where it becomes to me a lot more interesting because you might start to find that there are a lot more species of animals in your local neighborhood than you realized and you didn't know they were there simply because you'd never thought about it before. So where can you go to find out more about them? So there are a couple of things you can do. you may have a parks department where you live, you might have a nature center, you might have somebody running wildlife walks or talks, that kind of thing. So all of these are great resources because they start to give you, more information about what's available in your area in terms of wildlife. There might be wildlife, ah, rehabilitation services or conservation groups. And you also might want to look at things like Inaturalist. Now Inaturalist is a citizen science project and it uses observations from people who log on and join to start building up a database of what's available, both flora and fauna in a particular area. And it's a great resource to see exactly what's being seen in your area and when. And this Starts to tick some of the boxes about when are, particular species around, when are they active? And if you remember from previous podcasts, it's good to know both time of year. So the example I often give is humpback whales off the coast of Australia. if you are in Sydney, for example between May and November, your chances of seeing humpback whales are pretty good. if you are trying to do it outside of those months, not so good because they're basically not there. So when are, animals around? Do they stay in the area? Do they move around? When are they more active? Are they more active during the day, at dawn or dusk or at night? So all of this information is there. If birds are your thing, there's a thing called ebird and I'll put links for both of these in the description of the podcast. And this will allow you to track local birds, look for hot spots, whether they tend to gather, that kind of thing, and it will increase your chances of seeing them. Now birds are really important actually, and I'll come back to those in a moment. you also might have access to museums, depending on where you live and how big, the area is. So again, these are great resources for finding out what's around with your research. Once you start understanding when animals are around, when they're active, that leads you into the kind of photographs you might be able to take, but also the kind of photography you might need to be thinking about. So obviously if they're about during the day, that's pretty easy. So, lizards for example, things like that that rely on heat from the sun, they tend to be out in the open as much as they can, although might disappear fairly quickly. So in Sydney we have the Eastern Valley Water Dragon, which is, they can be up to about a meter long. they are really beautiful lizards and often you'll find them basking on paths. And this is on more kind of nature reserve, ah, type paths. But to approach them you've got to be very careful, very slow, don't go in too fast. I would sit down distance from them where they were comfortable and I might gradually get in closer. But I'm also using, 104, 100 mil lens so I can get in and get good photographs of them, get good, close ups. So these techniques are the kinds of thing, to some extent at least, that you're likely to be using when you're away. So this is really good practice. And it's not just the physical practice, but also just a mindset how do you approach an animal that will naturally be quite wary of you? Another thing to think about when you, when it comes to practice is, is photographing birds. And this is my sort of go to advice for anyone who wants to practice for a wildlife shoot. It's basically to photograph birds in flight. And the reason that I suggest that is that they're quite difficult, particularly if you're looking at composition, you're looking at depth of field. If you've got them flying against a background, it's great if that background is a little out of focus, maybe a little bit blurred. So what aperture setting do you need to do that? What mode settings you need on the camera to do that, what shutter speed you need to do that. So all of these things are great practice because you start to learn instinctively what settings you need on the camera to get certain results. And this is really important when you are away somewhere. And as I've said, it might be a trip that you won't repeat because you may only have one opportunity to get the shot. So you don't at that point want to be trying to remember what shutter speed you used last time and all of that. It needs to be pretty much instinctive. So I definitely recommend photographing birds as often as you can. And, just really get those down. If there are other animals, again, look at the time of day, assume that they're around obviously, and if they are around at dawn or dusk, what do you need to do? How can you get a good exposure on those images? is it to do with camera settings? Are you looking for alternative sources of light? What happens if you are looking at backlighting? So if you've got an animal with the sun behind, how do you work, with that? Start going out in all kinds of weather. So bright sunlight is great. I think most of us like being out in the, in the sunshine, but also when it's overcast, when it's raining, all the kind of weather conditions that you're likely to find when you're away. Because the more you can practice in different weather conditions, the better your chances are of getting a really good shot when it matters. And overcast is good because, and I'm thinking of a time when I was photographing tigers in the, forest. Although it was a bright day outside, once we got into the forest it was quite dark, so I'm actually running in a low light situation. That was the same when I photographed gorillas in southwest Uganda. We're in forest, it was actually, rainy season. So we had a lot of overcast, but in the forest we would have bright sunshine outside. But under the canopy it's quite dark. But also you get these shafts of light coming through. So what are you thinking about when you see that situation? I'm basically waiting, if I can, to get the light on the eye of the animal. So. Because when I'm taking a portrait of an animal, it's like any portrait, we connect through the eyes and I want people looking at my images to connect with the animals. So I'm trying to get the eye lit. But obviously most animals are, trying to do the exact opposite. Because if you think about it, if you've got the sun lighting up your eye, you can't see too much. So you're going to keep your eyes shaded. So these are the kind of things to think about. So if the eyes are shaded, how do you expose against, a bright background so that people can see the eyes very clearly. So this is the kind of stuff to start getting on top of when you're practicing. So definitely shooting birds is a good one and it's good practice if you want to use back button focusing, if that's an option. Birds are really good for practicing that. but also any time of day, in any weather conditions, it's, it's really good to get out in all of them so that you feel pretty confident, you know, as I say, instinctively about how you have to set the camera up given any set of conditions. And again, when you're away, you, might normally have bright weather, but it maybe won't stay that way. Maybe it's quite changeable where you're going. So the more experience you've got, the more hands on you've got, the better. Okay, so that's really how to start approaching animals. So it is a case of doing your research and doing the same kind of research that you would do for your local animals as you would do for wild animals if you were going away. And then the next thing is to just really get on top of your camera gear and understand what's going on with it. So you need to definitely need to understand the exposure triangle. if you don't understand that, then understand it because it will severely limit what you can do with your camera. You're going to pretty much be in auto, which will get you, look, it will get you photographs that you can share. But to me they're more snaps. you've got very limited control over depth of field, over shutter speed, over all of those things the camera is just going to do it all for you. So you'll have a nice shot, but it's not very creative. And for me, the best wildlife photographs, in fact any photographs, are the ones where there's a bit of creativity has gone into it. Someone's put some thought into it, they've created. Created some impact. It might be use of light, it might be use of color, it might be use of depth of field. Once you understand all those things, once you understand the exposure triangle, you then have access to the full creative potential of your camera gear. If you don't understand it, you don't, and that's the simple fact. so things to think about, first of all, modes, so what I mean by that is aperture priority, shutter speed priority, all of that. some people have the idea that professional photographers are shooting in manual all the time. It's really a bad idea if you're photographing wildlife because often things will happen very quickly and you don't have time to make a lot of changes in settings to the camera. In fact, you may not have changes, the time to make any changes at all. So I tend to use aperture priority. So that means that I'm controlling the aperture setting, which controls my depth of field, other people. And, depending on what you're shooting, you might want shutter speed priority, where shutter speed is the key thing you want to control. And the camera will work out the rest to make sure you get a good exposure. So that's essentially how modes work. So I don't know what you've got on your gear. If you're not familiar with it, get familiar with it because it's really important, because this is where the power of modern cameras really works for you. The camera will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you in terms of just working out what other. What the settings need to be for a given situation in terms of lighting, backlighting, all that kind of thing. Another one is autofocus. If you're using autofocus, I generally do, but not always because sometimes I'm shooting an animal and there's. And there's my phone. There might be a lot of, grass in the way. So the camera doesn't quite know what it's supposed to be focusing on. So you need to make sure you're focusing on the right thing. Again, for me, I focus on the animal's eye. The eye nearest to me is the one I normally focus on. So you need to understand how your autofocus works. And also, if you've got Any kind of tracking ability. So if you are working with animals that are moving, and particularly if they're moving towards you or away from you, particularly towards you, you want to be able to keep the eyes in focus, the animal's moving. So, modern cameras with that capability are very useful when it comes to shutter speed. The rules, or the rule I generally talk about, is if you're shooting at thousandths of a second, you freeze everything. If you're shooting at hundredths of a second, you start to introduce movement. Obviously, the slower you go, the, more movement you get in the image, depending on how fast your subject is moving. And then once you start getting into tenths of a second and below, you begin to get a lot of movement and you start, start to get into these more ethereal, kind of results. So again, from a creative perspective, what do you want to do with the image that you're shooting? Is it to freeze the action? So if I'm photographing a, breaching whale, for example, I'm going to freeze everything. I want individual droplets of water frozen and visible so I can zoom in on them. If I'm photographing an animal moving, sometimes it's better to shoot them at a slower speed. So you've got a bit of blur in the background. Maybe their paws are blurred slightly from the movement, but it gives you a more dynamic image. So what kind of image do you want to shoot? And this again, is something you can practice on either with local wildlife or with birds. birds are good because they're generally moving in the air. and I say that as a joke. so start thinking about that. Start getting creative about the images. Don't just shoot me two images. Shoot stuff that really inspires you. other things to think about. Aperture, depth of field, how much depth of field you want. Are you shooting an animal that is stationary? You can zoom in on one eye and do very, very narrow depth of field. So even the animal's snout or the back of the ears are out of focus. That really draws the viewer's eye into the animal's eye and it gets. That builds that connection between the viewer and the subject. Or you can have a, a wider depth field so that maybe it's the background that's out of focus. And although the background might provide some context so you can clearly see it's in a wilderness area, the viewer's eye is always drawn back to the animal. And so that is very clearly the subject of the shot. And that's another basic thing, making sure that you have a clear subject in your shot. from a composition point of view, use rule of thirds as a starting point. But there are others. So maybe experiment with composition. What works for you, what creates a more interesting image. And something I've said before, the best definition I've had of what makes a photograph interesting is how long somebody spends looking at it. You know, the more they, they're kind of drawn on a journey throughout it. So you, you might use leading lines, for example, you know, but you're taking the viewer on a little journey, into the world of this particular animal and also hopefully getting, having them feel some sort of connection with the animal when they connect with the eye. So composition is really important. One of the most important things, I think, is to get down to eye level. So if you're shooting people, in particularly children, if you've, if you've done that, you want to get down to their level. It gets, the photographs have much more impact and the same is true with animals. So when I'd been in, some of these safari vehicles where you, might be familiar with them, the roof kind of lifts up so you can stand up and shoot down at the animals. I never do that. I like to get down between the seats. I'll open a window, or if there isn't a window, that's even better. stick the camera out and I'll shoot images as close to eye level as I can get. And what happens is the resulting image, it looks like you're to able on the ground with the animal. That allows you to set up, a really good, intimate, connection with the animal. So think about that. And also burst mode. So do you have burst mode on your camera? Are you familiar with it? if you've got an animal running, then burst is really good. Or if you've got things like whales breaching or dolphins, things like that, where things are moving quickly. So I really must turn that phone off. Yeah, you need to be in burst mode because then you get a selection of images. Now how familiar are you with burst mode? So I know on the camera I use for most of my work in EOS 5D, I use the biggest image I can store on that camera. I shoot raw. But the downside to that, it gives me a really big image to work from in the first place. But the downside is that it can only run a short burst before it runs out of speed. It takes a finite amount of time for it to write the file to the memory card and If I'm throwing too many at it, it has to pause and wait so I can get maybe a second or two at full burst, but that's it. There's then a pause. Whereas on my EOS 7D, which is my backup, which is a cropped frame, so it's a smaller file that is much, much better for things like dolphins. I can do far longer bursts, when I'm shooting dolphins than I can with the 5D. So, again, the point about this is to just understand your camera, understand what the limitations are, and then work around them or work with them, but understand what it is you've got to bear. in mind. Okay, so that's pretty much it for this podcast. It's a short one. we've had some long ones recently. So just to recap, if you are serious, about wildlife photography, but you don't get the opportunity to shoot wildlife very often. The important thing to do is look at what you have access to locally. And this could even include your pets, by the way. but if you don't have pets, if you're not in a wilderness area, but you're in an urban environment, start looking at what's around. Pretty much everywhere there are birds. So this is why I tend to recommend people shoot birds. But, there might be other animals, too, that you can photograph. And the benefit of that is you might learn a lot more about the area that you're living in as well, which is always good to know. It's always nice to understand, more about where we live and who knows what you'll find out. So the links are in the description. That's it for this one. 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, 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.