A Complete Guide to Animal Photography
Feel free to check out the ‘Catalogue’ tab to look at a lot of examples of animal photography I have taken!
Step 1: Gear
I’m definitely not someone who believes that gear is the most important factor in taking great photos. A better camera doesn’t make a better photographer — it’s always the skill, vision, and patience of the person behind the lens that matters most. However, when it comes to professional animal photography, certain equipment becomes not just helpful, but essential. Without it, capturing good animal photos becomes quite a challenge, maybe even impossible.
Animals are constantly moving, and that can be incredibly frustrating when trying to get a clear shot. This is why it’s crucial to have a camera with good subject tracking. The ability to track fast-moving subjects and adjust focus quickly is key to capturing sharp shots. In other words, your camera should have a strong AI Servo mode.
AI Servo: A continuous focus mode where the camera constantly adjusts focus while the shutter button is half-pressed, perfect for moving subjects.
Personally, I use the Canon R8 for my animal photography. It features a highly advanced AI Servo system with animal eye detection, making it extremely accurate when tracking fast or unpredictable wildlife. Its powerful subject recognition and real-time focus adjustments ensure that even the quickest movements are captured clearly.
Next, let’s talk about lenses. It’s rare that you’ll be within 10 metres of the animal you’re photographing. More often than not, especially on safaris or in the wild, you’ll find yourself 50 to even 100 metres away. In cases like bird photography, the distance might be even greater.
Because of this, using the kit lens (like the 18–150mm) just won’t cut it. You’ll need a lens with longer reach to bring your subject into frame and capture the finer details from afar.
Personally, I use the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 L IS USM lens.
(Note: My Canon R8 uses the RF mount, so I use an RF–EF adapter with this lens.)
For me, this lens hits the sweet spot. I don’t often need anything longer than 300mm, and this range covers most of my animal photography needs.
It’s also weather-sealed, making it reliable in harsh or changing outdoor conditions. Image quality is excellent — sharp, vibrant, and clear. It also features fast, silent autofocus and effective image stabilisation, which is super helpful when shooting handheld at full zoom.
But the ideal zoom range depends on how far you usually are from your subjects, so choose what you think will best fit you.
Lastly, I highly recommend investing in a lens hood.
- It helps block stray sunlight from entering the lens, especially when shooting toward strong light sources.
- It improves overall contrast and color by preventing washed-out or hazy shots.
- Bonus: it adds a layer of physical protection to your lens in rough outdoor environments.
Step 2: Vision
The most important thing when you capture animals, is the vision.
Ask yourself this; what do you intend to capture through that one shot? Do you want to capture the ferocity of a lion? Or do you want to capture its glory? Or do you want to capture its graceful movement as it struts in the tall grass?
What this does is it creates this mental image in your mind of what you really want from that photography session. You will not go in to your environment clueless to what you are going to take, and just randomly take photos with no meaning.
a photo without meaning serves no purpose
you could call it something like a “framework” of what you want to take that day.
Another thing I love to do is I hop on google, and I search exactly what I want to take. For example: “Lion graceful”. I scroll through the images, and I save all the ones that I like. This further creates this mental image of what I want to take. However, it is noteworthy that you should not dedicate your time to copying and recreating the pictures you see online. Use them purely as ideas, and create your own version of those images. Whats the point of copying off someone else? right?
As a photographer, unleash your creativity and create that is unique to you!
Furthermore, something most people don’t think about is leveraging the use of AI to help plan your shots. Just put in the type of photos you want to take that day, and ask it to give you ideas on what type of shots you can take.
Here is a quick cheat sheet of common themes I like to use for my animal photography
- ferocity of animals
- mutualism
- gracefulness of animals
- ‘expressive’ animals -> parrot seems like it is smiling, angry lion etc.
- environmental impact on animals -> e.g. sea turtles with plastic bags right next to them
- familial bonds
- ‘in action’ shots -> hunting/flying/running
- patterns -> feather patterns
- human wildlife interaction
Step 3: Background and Composition
Here are a quick list of framing techniques that I personally think are fantastic for animal photography:
- rule of thirds
- bokeh effect (background blur, to emphasise focus on subject)
- foreground elements (provide depth of field)
- leading lines (although I use this quite rarely)
- Eye level perspective (which means getting down to your animals eye level, e.g. by crouching or lying down)
- Motion blur -> if your animal is running you could do a panning photography shot to make your animal clear and the background motion blurred.
Step 4: Patience
Animal photography requires 1 key value; patience. Animals won’t do what you want them to do 95% of the time. To get your perfect shot, you often need to wait for hours. Speaking from experience, I have waited for a good 4 hours to take a single picture of a bird.
However, trust me, the wait will definitely be worth it. The results you get, and the feeling after you get it is incomparable to anything else.
Step 5: Practice!
Get out into the wild as much as you can. As you practice more, your photos will constantly keep getting better. Don’t give up, and happy photographing!