As a photographer it is important to think outside the box. There are those days when the animals are not creating any specific action that could be called “mind blowing”. There are also certain animals which are particularly difficult to photograph due to lack of eye contact or ’emotion’; but with a little bit of an artistic touch we can tell a story without seeing the ‘whole picture.’As a photographer it is important to think outside the box. There are those days when the animals are not creating any specific action that could be called “mind blowing”. There are also certain animals which are particularly difficult to photograph due to lack of eye contact or ’emotion’; but with a little bit of an artistic touch we can tell a story without seeing the ‘whole picture.’

Don’t be afraid to cut pieces of the animals off in the image, focus on different parts of the body. In the above example I have just taken a photo of the trunk and in my humble opinion it allows the person looking at the photo to wonder what was happening. What was the elephant smelling?

So remember your basic rules of photography but get creative. This photo was taken on a Nikon D7000 with a Nikkor 70 – 200mm f2.8 VRII lens. Shutter speed was 1/5000 at f4.5 and ISO 800. An afterthought would have been to drop the ISO right down to 200 because the light was good but I still had the settings on my camera from photographing the Southern Pride in much lower light earlier that morning.

Expose your balance

Richard

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