Want to be a wildlife photographer? Want to be a better wildlife photographer? Want to help me be a better wildlife photographer?

Today I am going to talk about what it takes to be a wildlife photographer. Throughout this thread we will cover the tools, knowledge, biology, and geography needed to be successful. What is success? Only you can answer that for yourself and your answer will be in a constant state of change as you progress.

John Shaw said "To be a better wildlife photographer, be a better biologist". What does that mean? To me it means that we have to know enough biology about an animal as to understand where it eats, sleeps, has sex, drinks, how it survives and where it wanders. To photograph an animal we need to know these things; who, what, where, when, why and how. We need to know what animal we want to photograph (the who), we need to know where it will be at and what time of the year, season, month, day or even hour. We need to know why it will be there (food, water, sex, sleep, travel and survival and not necessarily in that order), and we need to know what it will be doing. With these answers, we can get our successful photograph.

We find the answers to these questions on the days we can't go photograph and it is called RESEARCH. There are a number of ways that we can do the research. Buy a book, ask friends, go to your fish & game department and talk to the biologist, buy a guide.

If you just want to have a photograph of an animal that you don't have and you could care less if you ever sold it, then buy a guide. It will tell you when to be at Ding Darling, what you can expect to see and where to photograph. Why don't I recommend this approach if you want to sell?, because publishers already have thousands of photos taken at THAT spot, of THAT animal at THAT park. Your great photo will be just like everybody elses great photo taken there. Nothing wrong with this approach as long as we know the limitations.

If you have to go to Ding Darling, then go a different time of day, month or season to get a photo that sets your photo apart from all the thousands of photos of Ding Darling.

Better yet, find out where your animal can be found that isn't a hot spot and photograph the animal there. It will take more research and more physical effort to get your photo, but you will have a unique photo that has more sales appeal to a publisher.