articles

snake bite protection gloves

The risk of injuries for both, the handler and the snake, decreased in recent years particularly due to use of snake bite resistant gloves. With new types of hi-tech fabric, a very high safety level of handling dangerous snakes with hands in gloves can be achieved, although no manufacturer will claim that his gloves provide 100% protection. The best and now de-facto standard snake bite protection gloves are made of material called SuperFabric®, and are of brand HexArmor. Read more...

which lens?

People are often asking me for lens recommendations, and, of course, I am saying: "Get the best lens you can afford!" This is my usual answer of the question "What lens?", and I explained the reasons of it in my earlier article — “Choosing the camera brand”. A much more difficult question is “Which lens?” Every lens has its purpose, and the choice of lenses depends on a number factors that may be different for different photographers. Therefore, a universally applicable and straightforward answer isn't possible to give. In this article I analyse currently Read more...

cleaning the background

Usually I don't like wildlife images with a subject on an absolutely “creamy” background unless this effect was obtained in a natural way — with a lens and not through postprocessing. When the background isn't detracting from the subject, I rather prefer that the objects in it, such as vegetation, are blurred but still a little recognisable than when it is looking just like a homogenous colour backdrop. In certain cases, however, I agree that the background has to be tweaked after the shot. This article deals with one such case and shows a process of cleaning the background in Adobe Photoshop. Read more...

some thoughts about image storage in the field

Keeping your image files safe when you are in the field is a very important issue — particularly when you are far from home for many weeks. Many shots that a nature photographer makes can’t be repeated — if these files get lost, your journey and weeks of work will lose any sense. Nowadays, any good CF and SD cards that are used with most DSLR cameras can accommodate thousands of images and are reliable enough to be used even under harsh environmental conditions for years. Due to their very small size it is easy to protect these cards from damage but also easy to lose them. Since the card is used only in a camera, there is also a danger that you unintentionally erase the files that you want to keep. Read more...

capture one vs. adobe photoshop lightroom: white balance

It may be a matter of taste, if the picture has more contrast and is more vivid, as it is in Capture One, or with less contrast and desaturated, as in Lightroom, but the colour temperature and tint values in these two programmes do not match at all, and the white balance in Lightroom doesn't even come close to the setting of the camera. The reason is for me a mystery. Read more...

choosing the camera brand

Beginners in digital nature photography looking for help in deciding which camera to buy may be disappointed because they won't find recommendations of a specific camera brand or model in the following text, but I hope that I could explain in this article why there can't be any. I outlined my own approach and the principles of choosing a camera system for use in professional or serious amateur photography. Read more...

my top 12 wildlife photography peeves

A recent article in Nature Photographers Magazine — about the "top eleven nature photography peeves" — has made me reflect on what are such peeves for me. I share the opinion of its author, Stan Rose, about the annoyances he has listed for landscape photography, and even could maybe add a couple of mines. However, not being a specialist for landscapes, I am more concerned with wildlife photography, and cliches in this field of nature photography annoy me much more. Thinking about it, I came up with my own list of 12. Read more...

what does it cost if i dropped my camera?

The equipment of an outdoor photographer lives dangerously. We carry around cameras, lenses and other gear that cost many thousands of euros (or dollars, or pounds...) exposing them more or less frequently to serious hazards of theft, robbery, mechanical or water damage, loss, etc. Considering the large number of various equipment items that we have with us when we are trekking in forests and mountains, the chances of an accident are quite high. I would even say that if you have many dozens of technical items with you, it is only a matter of time till something bad happens with one or another. Read more...

rescuing a photo: obstacles in the view field

Obstacles in the view field are among the most usual causes of our failure to take a photo of an animal if we have found it among vegetation. If we would strictly follow the canons of wildlife photography that demand a crisp picture of an animal on a smooth background we would have to reduce the scope of our subjects to a quite small number of species. Otherwise, with animal species that usually stay in dense grass or canopy, there is no alternative to photographing through grass or leaves. Then advanced postprocessing tricks like those that I am going to discuss further in this article may be the only way to a usable image. Read more...

photo trip or photo tour?

Photo tours are guided group trips organised by photographers for amateurs, photography beginners, and even for tourists with no serious interest in photography but wanting to watch how those pictures they see on TV and in books are being created. Along with workshops, for nature photography professionals, such tours are today the main source of income. For a serious nature photographer, however, a self-organized photo trip is usually the only way to travel. I have arguments pro and contra photo tourism that I give in this article. Read more...

the correct colour

Photographs of nature subjects quite often have colour shift towards one of the primary tones — yellow, blue, green, red, magenta, cyan. Since our subjects have natural colours and so is usually the colour of the light (even if it is emitted by a flashgun), it is the observer — the camera or the photographer — that we have to blame when the overall colour tone of the captured image appears incorrect. Both the equipment and the photographer can make mistakes in colour adjustments, and the colour temperature in an unprocessed image will require some correction in most cases. Three approaches to this are presented in this article. Read more...

rescuing a photo: lighting problems

Nowadays, in the age of digital photography, the cliché about "the photographer making the photo" has lost much of its sense because everyone knows that the capability of our electronic equipment is too often crucial for the success of our work. This is particularly true for wildlife photography. Too often not a single photo but the whole expedition will be threatened with failure due to inability of the equipment — particularly of the camera — to capture an image with adequate quality. The computer-aided postprocessing is often the last chance for us to save the hard work that we did in the field. Read more...

colour madness

Even though colour management in digital imaging may appear complicated to many people, it is pretty straightforward, and one can with very little effort achieve with it good results in a printing workflow. However, the colour presentation in digital media has always been and remains an issue that photographers and artists are struggling with. Like in printing, it is the content author who has to care for consistent colour display across various presentation media. Unfortunately, as long as software and devices aren't doing it themselves consistently and automatically, it is hardly possible to achieve here such level of colour confidence as with images that are presented on paper. Read more...

prime vs. zoom

With regard to current state of optical technology, and as most people who are serious about photography, I generally prefer the first to the second. I think all experienced photographers would know why, while for the others, the difference between zoom and prime lenses, as well as their advantages and disadvantages are explained in many books and articles, and demonstrated by countless comparison tests and reviews. This article shouldn't be another profound analysis but only a statement of my personal attitude to zoom and prime lenses and their use in nature photography. I just want to write down my thoughts about this not only for readers but also for myself. Read more...