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| © Marina Cano |
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It's rare to find a camera-ready animal either in nature or zoos. "Usually something must be altered to produce a pleasing image," Cano says. "Successful wildlife photographers learn to analyze a scene for what needs to be 'fixed.'"
Often, the problem is a factor that you can address, such as lens selection, camera position, focus, or exposure. Other times, it's something outside your immediate control, such as dim or contrasty lighting, bad weather, overly bright or cluttered backgrounds, or an uncooperative subject.
When any of these occur, cut your losses, pack up your gear, and return another day.
Splurge on the lens
Using a Canon EOS 30D ($800, street), she finds its 8.2MP resolution adequate for her needs. She wanted a full-blown professional lens, though, and paid over $500 more for her glass -- the Canon 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L EF IS ($1,310, street) -- than for her camera.
"The lens is your most important tool. It should be sharp, very fast-focusing, and light yet very sturdily built," she says. She also appreciates her zoom's image stabilization, since it often frees her from the encumbrance of a tripod.
Fine-tune in Photoshop
Cano edits all her images in Adobe Photoshop CS3, often using the Contrast and Levels tools. "I first make a careful selection of the animal, extracting it and dialing up brightness and contrast to make the subject stand out from the immediate background," she says.
To isolate the main element even more, she usually selects parts of the background and works the areas of light and shade independently. "Light areas usually need to be toned down," she explains, "and dark areas, because shadows can often shift slightly blue, need to be balanced with the color temperature of the main light falling on the subject."
Cultivate a style
If you're going to take wildlife pictures that will never be viewed together as a collection, your style can be all over the map. You can crop loosely or tightly, print dark or light, make large or small images, use white borders, black borders, or no borders at all. It won't matter.
But if you want to show your work collectively, as a slide show, gallery exhibit, or (as Cano is doing) as a book, you will achieve a more profoundly satisfying impression by sticking to a uniform visual style.
Cano's photography has a coherent, cohesive vision that unites her animal portraits. Extremely tight crops, black, featureless backgrounds that blend into black borders, and often dramatic backlighting -- you can identify a wildlife photo as hers from 100 yards away.
Love your subject
Cano attributes her success to the fun she has photographing wildlife. Fascinated by animals, she uses the camera not so much to make beautiful pictures but as a means of holding onto magical moments she's witnessed.
"If you're motivated by this kind of passion, you aren't weakened or put off by adversities. The failures don't matter to you and you never get bored," she says. "Photographers usually say that they 'capture' images, but for me the opposite is true -- my 'models' have captured me!"
Visit photo.net for more of Marina Cano's wildlife portraits.
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