meal. The crowds of other visitors or even
distracting joggers or bikers aren’t out yet
during early hours, and you’ll often have
the wildlife to yourself, even at popular
city parks.
See them eye-to-eye
The No. 1 way to capture more compelling
neighborhood wildlife shots is to get
down to the subject’s eye level. This isn’t
always the easiest thing to do, but it is the
best way to get more interesting shots.
With large subjects such as local deer,
this is fairly easy as they aren’t that much
smaller, in most cases, than we are, and
you can just shoot from your normal height
or maybe from down on one knee. Take a
chipmunk, a rabbit or a songbird flitting
around on the ground, however, and getting
to its eye level is more of a challenge. In
some cases, lying in the prone position
might be necessary, such as at the local
beach or shoreline trail when photograph-
ing shorebirds. In other cases, if you can
find small animals that are up higher, it will
make things easier while trying to capture
an eye-to-eye image.Luck favors the prepared
Sometimes when you find a nice,
cooperative subject at your local park or
even in your own backyard, you might
just get lucky with an action, a behavior
or a unique expression. Oftentimes
certain animals will telegraph what they
are about to do, and careful observation
can pay off with a fast action shot (many
birds will poop just before taking off). If
the action of some quick-moving subject
can be predicted or anticipated, excellentimages can result. Being prepared,
shooting a lot and then getting “lucky”
does happen.Watch for behavior
Simple portraits of cute or colorful local
wildlife are nice, and I recommend
taking as many as possible, especially
when you do find a friendly subject who
tolerates your presence. But most of the
animals at neighborhood places are fairly
common and have been shown in photos
thousands of times before. In order to get
your particular shots to stand out from the
crowd, you need to capture behavior.Composition Is Still Important.
Mountain bluebird, open space park,
Parker, Colorado. The diagonals of the
branch are good leading lines, and the
bird is placed on a “power point” in
the composition, looking into the open
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Manage Your Background. Chipmunk
eating a wild raspberry in an open-
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Get Out There Early. White-tailed
deer, city park, Denver, Colorado. I
know this particular city park very well
from years of visiting. I know where
the sun will rise, and I know where
the deer hang out. The morning I
got this image, everything came
together perfectly. The horizon was
an orange glow, and the deer was
separated from the tree enough for
my silhouettes to make sense. Canon
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