A Tip for Wildlife Photography

I share a tip I find very helpful for many of my student and something I often see many struggle with in the field. That is changing settings while keeping your eye in the viewfinder.

[@tobiasyoder]

Man hadn’t really thought about it but so true. I think it’s surely a trait every experienced wildlife photographer has that they can intuitively think “darker, brighter, action” and the settings are just there.

[@tobiasyoder]

Seems kind of like typing on a computer, you really just have to get to the point that you can just think of a word and your hands type it without looking down at the keys

[@RayHennessy]

@@tobiasyoder totally, that's a great example. Your fingers just do the movement as you think it instead of think then do, it's almost like think and it's already happening.

[@veggiemom5]

Good tip. I definitely need to practice that.

[@RayHennessy]

And it's easy to practice anywhere!

[@uaebifvideo5472]

Thank you for the information, Ray!!.

[@RayHennessy]

Sure thing, hope you enjoyed it!

[@rxdgaming1]

Great tip

[@RayHennessy]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@JEmmertz]

Superb tip! When I bought my first dSLR I had been reading the manual for a month already. I knew where stuff should be (and I knew what I immediately wanted to change), and then I set out to shoot BIF just to make sure I didn't have time to think too much before the moment was gone. It was certainly rough, but the best way I could think of to quickly learn the camera and what it could do - I also must have the lowest possible keeper rate ever from that first dSLR... 😜 Nowadays I have a much more sophisticated camera and have learnt to set up more custom settings to easier have different and appropriate starting points handy. Guess who's forgetting which custom settings are best and for what? So, my thinking is there, the approach is there, now I only need to find my mojo, and shoot often enough to make the muscle memory work for me and not against me.

[@RayHennessy]

Sounds like you worked hard at getting that muscle memory which is great! Hopefully it works seamlessly for you now! Thanks for sharing your experience.

[@midknight4681]

I think im lucky on this one. The canon R10 has an extra mappable dial which I programmed to control my ISO, and it's in probably the easiest to find position possible. Thanks for all the videos, as a student they really help keeping me energized and excited to go out when stuff gets busy.

[@RayHennessy]

That's great to have an extra dial and it sure does sound easy to have all the main controls on isolated dials! Thanks for watching and glad you are excited!

[@stevethompson8154]

Learn to adjust setting at a zoo is a good idea

[@RayHennessy]

Great suggestion Steve, that would give you plenty of practice!

[@neilcole3406]

Great tips, love it!

[@RayHennessy]

Thanks!

Last video we could see more from your photos, and I really liked your work. My question would be if you could give tips of approaching wild life. I also like environmental shoots (what you talked about in the video about prime or zoom) but to use a wider focal length is hard except if one mounts a hide before the animals come or with animals that are not really wild anymore.

[@RayHennessy]

I'll do my best to share a video about that. It's a challenging thing to show and the main thing that helps me with that topic is experience, which of course is hard to teach, but thanks for the suggestion and I'll see what I can come up with about that topic!