Wildlife Photography Secrets: Angle of Light

 

 In the old days, you would purchase a package of film and inside the film box was an instruction sheet that described the concept of sunny 16, shooting your images with the sun at your back and other such general information. The makers of the film knew that shooting your images with the sun behind your back would be the easiest technique for those with little photographic experience. In this article, let’s discuss lighting. 

During full sun, there are three basic types of lighting for wildlife photos. These are direct frontal lighting, some type of angled lighting and silhouettes. Of course, there are variations and combinations of these three; but these are the three basic types.  

There is a famous bird photographer that teaches his students; “Point your shadow at the bird”; basically saying to use direct frontal lighting. He teaches that this increases his percentage of keepers because he does not need to worry if the light is on the wrong side of the bird or that the bird may have turned his head out of the light. With direct frontal lighting, if the bird turns his head to the left, the sun strikes the left side of its face; if the bird turns its head to the right, the sun strikes the right side of the face. The same type of lighting can also be used on mammals, reptiles and other crawling things. Many times, this is a good lighting technique; other times it is: ah, shall we say BORING! Direct frontal lighting means no shadows; no shadows mean no definition to feathers or fur. Take a look at your passport photo or your driver’s license photo; this is direct frontal lighting. 

My mentor and teacher, Charles Glatzer, instructs that “light illuminates, shadows define”. Basically, by moving the light a bit off angle, the light now defines the feathers, fur or texture of the animal better and gives it more depth and rounding. With the light now coming at an angle, it does make the imaging process a bit more challenging because you must wait till the animal moves its head or body into the most pleasing light angle. Few things look worse than having a shadow on the wrong side of the body or a shadow hide important details.
Wait till the light is directly behind the animal; expose for the light and you have silhouette lighting. Basically, the subject will be black and the background will be bright; if it happens to be a sunset or sunrise; it will be bright and colorful.

So when you setup your camera to photograph wildlife (or you Aunt Minnie), carefully consider the angle of the light. Many times, you can move a few feet to the left or right and completely change the mood and emotion of an image. I wish you success in your photography endeavors.

Wildlife Photographgy: Making money with stock

         (all images copyright of Moose Henderson)

Wildlife photography is an exciting occupation but frequently not lucrative. Except for a few, most full-time wildlife photographers supplement their income with workshops and such.

Some sell their wares at art shows or also branch out into consumer photography, such as weddings, portraits or even pet photography.

This blog post will cover the basics of stock photography. Stock agencies host and market your images and take a large percentage of the sales income. There are two main types of stock agencies, tradition and micro stock. The traditional agencies require a contract and monthly or quarterly uploads of fresh stock. Typically traditional agencies sell images at a higher cost and return a higher investment. Micro stock agencies sell images for much less but you make money by the volume of images sold. Micro agencies also do not have set submission requirements for uploads. They will accept one image or thousands.

The images that sell best via stock is concept images; images the illustrate a concept or idea that goes with an article or publication. I won the grand prize at a major contest with the Jumping Arctic Fox image at the top of this post but it has never sold as stock. However, I have sold hundreds of the following bald eagle and mountain lion image. These illustrate the concepts of strength, freedom, majesty, etc. so they fit a wide variety of uses.

Other images, like this bird seed, may only sell once in a blue moon. However, if you sell 1000 different "single sale" images per year, you are making a bit more money than if you sold none.

So, let us look at some actual numbers. I have a bit over 1000 images on 26 different stock agencies. Each agency does their own marketing and some do not do well; other do quite well. Of the 26 agencies, only a hand-full provide an income on a regular basis. See, the stock agencies will not pay you for your images until you reach a threshold of money; some are $50, others $100. Therefore, even if an agency sells your best image, you will not get the money till you achieve this threshold. Typical sale price ranges from 0.33 cents to $20 plus dollars. So, if a stock agency is a slow seller, you may never get your money as you will never reach the threshold.

However, this blog is not about "doom and gloom"; it is about making passive income via wildlife stock. As I said, I have roughly 1000 images (the same 1000 images) on multiple sites. On average, I make approximately $150-300/month from my images. Typically that number represents approx. 250 images sold per month. Remember, this is micro stock, they are selling volume, not high prices. It is also passive income. I put all my images in the agencies in 2007. I have not added a single image or done anything other than retrieve my money for the past seven years. I do plan to add more images but I have been working toward my PhD in moose ecology so photography was moved to the back burner.

My top two stock agencies (I make 85% of my monthly income from these two) are Shutterstock and Dreamstime. Here are links for these agencies (my company name for my wildlife photography is Visceral Image):

http://www.shutterstock.com/

http://www.dreamstime.com/visceralimage_info

The next 10% of my income comes from the following agencies:

http://depositphotos.com/home.html
https://us.fotolia.com/
http://www.istockphoto.com/
http://www.bigstockphoto.com/

The last 5% comes from the balance of my stock agencies which include Veer, 123 Royalty Free, isignstock, Graphic Leftovers and many more. Thanks for being a part of my blog and I wish you the best of luck in your photography adventures. Questions welcome; trust me, you are not boring me!