Right in Front of You

Bill Gallagher
1060 words




    There are three ways to get good wildlife pictures, and they are #1) Stealth, including all kinds of remote cameras, along with just plain sneaking up on critters without scaring them away; #2) The Thoreau Effect, where the critters feel at home and part of the family, and are not by nature scared, and #3) A combination of those two.  Of course there is not a lot of stealth involved sneaking upon a wildflower, small favors and be happy for what you get.  As well, Kitty Assassin makes life very difficult for anything smaller than itself.  Kitty Assassin is in possession of another imperative altogether.  If you don't like assassins, don't get a kitty.  If you do like Kitty Assassins, then love them very much, and take lots of feline action shots!
     Good wildlife pictures have come a long way also because we can take frames and frames for nothing.  Use your tools.  Some pictures are bound to be better than others, law of averages, unless you forget to take the lens cap off or some other foolishness which we are all prey to at one time or another.     
     Whats better, easy wildlife pictures that look like uncle georges old home movies, or sorting through a few hundred digipix before polishing 5 or 10 Awesomes?  Are you in it for some nefarious reason, taking these wildlife peek-chures comrade, or to have fun?  Don't worry and don't hurry.
     One thing I like about a digital camera is the ability to zoom in.  To professional photographers thats always been a given, but digital makes it easy enough for putzes,  meaning the technology has been brought successfully to the masses.  Sometimes I use the camera in lieu of a microscope, or a telescope.  Its amazing what detail the thing reveals after being further magnified with Gimp. 
     Here again you can click off a hundred or even a thousand pictures no problem, and without feeling that burning sensation from the buttock you wear your wallet on.  If you are on an outing take along some other memory storage, a laptop, or even something I don't know about yet, to store your pictures, so you can clear the camera memory and take more pictures.  Laptops work well with small invertors and a lighter-plug/powerpoint plug.  A final thing about telescoping lenses:  the more you zoom in, the steadier your hand must be, and a tripod is not expensive and a lot of times worth it.  They screw right into the little brass socket on the bottom of the camera, the one you always wondered about.  How is that for cool?
     These were all hard earned epiphanies for me, and I hope they are useful to some people who might also need the informations.  An important note: If you are using stealth to get wildlife pictures some bait never hurts to lure things that might otherwise stay away.  Sometimes, if the birds are wrecking the tomatoes, at least you can get good pictures of the birds happily pigging out.  That always makes a nice presentation, eh? 
     If you can get something like a wet frog contrasted against bright pink plastic, or a tarantula hawk on a piece of green indoor/outdoor carpeting, then you really have a treasure there.  Seriously, it is good to get some contrast between the subject, especially if it is alive, and its background.  This isn't always possible, so again, be happy for what you get, and don't let lack of contrast stop you from taking pictures, take more in fact.
     Lighting is a big deal, including use of flash.  I took many pictures with my digital cameras in many types of lighting, and some were good enough for sale as black and whites to a coin related magazine I once wrote for.  I did not know the modern magazines used digital even for their covers, and when I sent in a certain type of picture to another magazine of the same genre, with the lighting just so, that other magazine bought it for the cover, in spite of the fact it was not oriented correctly.  I quickly learned to use that lighting and background as my photo signature for that magazine and ended up with eight or nine covers plus 125+ articles before the magazine shut its doors in 2018.  I many times have created specialty lighting situations, though I really do like certain times of day best, taking the pictures in both shade and bright sunlight.  Make sure the Macro adjustment is switched on when taking close ups.
     I love all the automatic settings for taking pictures.  I notice there are some slight variations in these functions and I play with them, which I have learned to do, after taking bunches of pictures and none of them worth a thing.  Like a monkey at the zoo, who has lost its marble down the drain, I search for a stick to fish it out with, and there is nothing. 
     Hows that for some Irish haiku, huh?
     I have very healthy digital storage media, it has no time whatsoever to even think about succumbing to electromagnetic viscosity or interdimensional crystallization. It does degrade like everything over time, but while it works I keep it warm, even hot on occasion, but not too hot.  It radiates at many wavelengths.  I have saved all my pictures in many many places since 1995 or so, and digitized others that came before that.  I occasionally go through my files and am amazed at some of the stuff I have seen. 
     Some of my best wildlife photos came when I was traveling around in my bus, not really looking for wildlife to take pictures of, but there it was.  I photographed some antsy little hummingbirds in Arkansas first, while I was at Miller Mountain digging quartz crystals, and some alien looking flowers in Florida growing on branches RIGHT OUT OF THE GROUND! That last was while riding my bicycle through a misty country morning somewhere in Agate Spearpoint country, Thonotosassa FL.  My subjects have accrued over time, and some pictures are even nice enough to show around.  If I am out I usually have a camera, and if I have a camera I am using it.  Never know what can turn up right in front of you.
     
     

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