Wildlife Photography How To

When 14^th century poet Piers Plowman said “Patience is a virtue” he could have been channeling the future work of National Geographic Photographer Charlie Hamilton James who captured this amazing image after making over 200,000 photographs with a motion–activated camera in Grand Teton National Park. James was intent on getting images of bears and wolves with the Teton Mountains in the background, and he sure came up with a winner!

It sure would be nice if all you had to do is zoom in tight to capture wildlife photos with razor-sharp details and no distracting image noise. Unfortunately, all too often that's not what happens because something off. Today's comprehensive tutorial from Australian proJan Wegener will set you up for consistently stunning results.

There are numerous reasons for removing unwanted objects from a photo, including the proverbial telephone pole emanating from a person’s head. In other instances the goal may be eliminate an object that either crowds the image or is too close to one edge of the frame.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeastern Alaska consists of 19,286,722 acres along the Alaskan North Slope, and supports a greater diversity of flora and fauna than anywhere else in the Arctic Circle. It was established in 1960 and is governed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It receives only about 1,500 visitors a year.

Today’s camera gear is faster than ever and much of it is tailor-made for capturing any sort of motion or movement. So then why do so many photographers struggle to shoot compelling images of action? Part of it has to do with timing and part of it has to do with composition. Your camera and lens can only do so much and there’s more to a great action shot than simply capturing the moment and making sure it’s in focus. For this assignment, we were looking for images of anything from basketball to dance to wildlife, just as long as there was some kind of action in the scene. For the winning images, we were looking for great composition, effective use of backgrounds and scenery, and powerful emotion: human, animal, or otherwise. Here are our six favorites.

Without a doubt, this month's Wildlife and Nature assignment brought out the best in Shutterbug readers. There were so many excellent entries, we could've easily picked twice as many favorites and still felt we left some great shots out. In the end, we narrowed it down to 10 wildlife and nature images that truly stood out.