Over the past three weeks, I wrote about ethics, knowing your equipment, and accessories. For the fourth and final week in this series on becoming a more deliberate wildlife photographer, I suggest giving yourself assignments to put into practice what you have learned. Doing so will help you expand your experience in various types of wildlife photography, which will, in turn, assure your success in nailing shots with confidence.
Exercises like these add to your constant education as a photographer, and they can give you a boost when you grasp a new concept or execute a great shot with knowledge and precision. I recently photographed the above female northern cardinal (Cardinalis cardinalis) within a heartbeat or two of seeing her hop down to a beautiful, natural perch. The sunset light in front of me had disappeared but was still evident up higher where she landed. My experience told me I had the correct distance to my subject, based on the minimal focusing distance of my 600mm lens, so all I had to do was aim and expose. This photo is straight out of the camera and uncropped.
Exercise #1: Shoot Small
Let’s start with a couple of close-up assignments to get your creative juices flowing. Find a piece of rope long enough to make a circle in the grass with an approximate diameter of three meters/10 feet. Your assignment is to find and photograph small wildlife subjects within the circle. If this sounds impossible, set aside your doubts. I am sure you will find plenty of subjects.
See how many small creatures you can find and photograph inside your circle in one hour, or two hours if you want to push yourself. While photographing your subjects, experiment with different lenses, accessories, and camera settings. Learn what combinations work best for each subject you photograph and take notes. I recently photographed some ants, knowing that they walk and move around quickly and provide a photographic challenge.
A few mornings ago, I spotted a stray brick on the property where I live. I picked it up to put it in the back of my vehicle and take it to my house. I began brushing off the layer of dirt covering the brick’s sides and bottom and discovered a scorpion hiding in an indentation on the bottom side. THAT woke me up quickly!
Exercise #2: Learn Your Minimum Focusing Distance
The next exercise is broken into two parts. For the first part, you do not need wildlife present because we are going to perform technical tests and take a few notes. Your backyard or an empty nearby field may be perfect for these tests. This is for practice and a self-assignment, not a big photo trip!
Grab your camera, tripod, longest lens, portable chair, measuring tape, notebook, and pen. Include extenders (magnifiers) and extension tubes (for closer focusing), if you have them. Set up your camera, longest lens, and tripod in a place where you can be comfortable and not be interrupted.
If your longest lens is a zoom lens, maximize the zoom. Manually focus the lens to the closest distance from you that it can; this is called your minimum focusing distance. Mark the spot with an object such as a bottle of water. Walk back to your camera and double-check to make sure the object is in focus, then measure the distance from the back of your camera (where the sensor/focal plane is) to the object and note this in your notebook. The top rear of your camera may have a small circle with a line across it parallel to the back of your camera, which indicates the focal plane. With my Canon R3 and a Canon 600mm f/4 lens, the minimum focusing distance is 5.2 meters/17 feet, 1 inch.
If you have an extender, such as a 1.4x, 1.7x, or 2x, add the extender to your camera and lens. Now, do the same exercise as above. Your minimum focusing distance will be longer than it was without the extender. Measure and take notes. With my Canon R3 and 600mm lens plus a 1.4x extender, the minimum focusing distance is 5.3 meters/17 feet, 3 inches.
If you have extension tubes, replace the extender with the extension tube. Perform the same exercise as above. Now, your minimum focusing distance will be shorter than it was without the extension tube. Measure and take notes. My Canon R3 with a 600mm lens plus a 20mm extension tube results in a minimum focusing distance of 4.3 meters/13 feet, 11 inches.
For fun, I combined the same camera and 600mm lens plus the 20mm extension tube and 1.4x extender and performed the same test with this new combination. The new minimum focusing distance was between the measurement with only the extender and the measurement with only the extension tube. I measured and found this combination generated a minimum focusing distance of 4.7 meters/15 feet, 6 inches.
Run this test a few times, and you will teach yourself what the minimum focusing distance looks like for your lens by itself, with an extender, with an extension tube, and with a combination of extension tube and extender. This may seem like a tedious process, and it IS, but if you perform these tests (especially the first one), you will have notes and a starting point of knowing your gear and how much distance you need before you take the camera out of the bag!
Repeat this with other long lenses and accessories you might have. When I photograph from a ranch blind, my 600mm lens is normally on my camera, but I have my 300mm lens alongside it in case a larger subject approaches the area.
The minimum focusing distance of the 300mm lens is shorter than the 600mm but has half the magnification. Let us say a wasp or butterfly lands in the water in front of me to drink. If it lands any closer than halfway across the water hole in front of my blind, I must add an extension tube to the 600mm lens so I can focus more closely, or I can switch to the 300mm lens but have only half the magnification and crop the resulting image in post-processing to fill the frame.
Now that you have learned what the minimum focusing distance is for your lens and any accessories you own, you can plan, research, and make a trip to a local city park, nature park, state park, or refuge to test your new skills. Once you are comfortable with minimum focusing distance, you should have more confidence when you spot a subject you want to shoot.
If you drive around looking for subjects to photograph, most of the time your subject will be too far away for you to have to worry about being too close to focus. However, if wildlife unexpectedly appears up close, you will be ready. That is precisely what happened to me when I was photographing the mama bobcat (Lynx rufus) in my backyard. I was so intent on watching and photographing her that I missed seeing two of her kittens just a few meters/yards in front of me until one popped up and ran. Thankfully, the other stayed put, and I knew I was far enough away to focus on it!