Today – nothing to do with politics or the state of the world!

Millions enjoy taking photographs of wildlife.

So it was with great pleasure to come across a guest article on the National Wildlife Federation‘s blogsite called: 7 Wildlife Photo Tips to Never Forget.

Here’s a flavour of the article:

I’ve always felt great wildlife photography mapped well to the Chinese proverb “the journey is the reward.” While I obviously enjoy seeing the end result of my wildlife photography outings I get a great deal of satisfaction in the crafting of those images. My best images often rise to the top because of one of the following maxims: –

1. Backgrounds are Equally Important as Your Subject

The article goes on to offer these tips:

• Embrace Serendipity When Photo Editing
• Challenge Viewers with Anthropomorphism
• Employ Non-Standard Compositions
• Capture Your Subjects at Their Eye Level
• Factor in Form and Pose
• Utilize Negative Space

It has loads of fabulous advice plus some pretty neat pictures.

Take a look at the last tip:

7. Utilize Negative Space

Don’t have a long lens? Fear not as images taken with shorter focal length lenses can help capture areas of negative space. By employing negative space you can enhance your subject by highlighting its place/scale, its environment and/or leverage contrasting color and textures to make your subject stand out.

Finally, having ‘borrowed’ these couple of images, it seems only proper to close the post with the last two paragraphs of the article promoting both the NWF and the guest author, Jim Goldstein.  If you own a camera and enjoy the great outdoors then do read the article in full.

Enter the National Wildlife Photo Contest

Be sure to read Jim’s previous post about selecting the right gear for spectacular landscape photography. And, after you’ve rented your gear, planned your trip, and taken your wonderful nature photos, remember to enter the National Wildlife Photo Contest. You could win part of $6,000 in prizes, including a Grand Prize trip for two to Churchill, Canada where you can see and photograph polar bears. There are wildlife and landscape categories, but the deadline to enter is July 15, so enter soon!

About Jim Goldstein

Jim Goldstein is a San Francisco-based professional photographer and author who has been in numerous publications, including Outdoor Photographer, Digital Photo Pro, Popular Photography and has self-published a PDF eBook Photographing the 4th Dimension – Time covering numerous slow shutter techniques. Follow Jim Goldstein on Google+ | Twitter | Facebook | 500px

 

And let me close with a favourite of mine – a dog photograph, of course!