It's one thing to tell your obedient dog to sit still for a photograph and reward him with a doggie treat after you've made a beautiful portrait. That's easy. If you're looking for more of a challenge, head out into the great outdoors and photograph animals in their natural environment.

Populated Environments

Even in populated areas, there are photos to be made. One of my most popular animal photographs was taken in a populated suburb. I was driving when I noticed a chicken off to the side of the road. It looked like it was ready to bolt across, so I quickly pulled over and grabbed my camera. Sure enough, the chicken did cross the road. I don't know why, but here's the proof:

Getting in Close

As opposed to pets, animals in the wild are less likely to let you get in close. There are a couple of ways to bridge that gap. The first thing is to use a longer telephoto lens. Prominent wildlife photographers commonly use huge 500 or 600mm lenses to get in close. But that's a solution that can cost you several thousands of dollars.

This portrait of an owl sitting on a prairie fence post at sunset was made with a relatively inexpensive 300mm/f4.0 lens coupled with a 1.4x teleconverter. By using the teleconverter, the lens became a 420mm/f5.6 lens.

I would have loved to get in closer to the owl. But the 300 was the longest lens I had with me and getting closer physically was not an option. Just looking into the bird's eyes told me that. If I had gotten out of the car, it would have flown away instantly.

But just because I couldn't fill the frame with the owl did not mean that I couldn't make a meaningful photo. I had great light and a warm color palette to work with. The background was clean. The trick of putting it all together was in the composition. By using the fence as a graphic element and putting the owl high in the frame, the composition overrules my proximity to the owl. If I had simply positioned the owl dead center in the frame without getting closer, the photograph would have been a failure and you would have thought, "Why didn't he get closer?"

Using Design and Motion

Another trick when you can't get in as close as you'd like is to use the visual design of the moment or scene. Every year I spot large groups of starlings making their way through the small towns around my home. They flock to the power lines along the highway and I can never resist pulling over to make interesting compositions of hundreds of birds.

For the frame above I made my initial composition of these birds sitting on a wire, cutting the frame in half diagonally. Then it was just a matter of waiting for something else to build onto that photograph. The birds flying in at the top of the frame were just what I needed. I made several exposures as they flew in for a landing. Then I edited it down to this one, my favorite of the series.

From the same situation, I made another photograph with a longer lens (a 400mm with a 1.4x teleconverter: 560mm) as a large flock of starlings flew by. I used a slow shutter speed (1/80th of a second), which captured the motion of the flock.

The techniques used to make these photographs can be used with any subject matter, human, animal or otherwise.