How I Use Photography in my Animal Art

I’ve always loved photography, ever since I borrowed my Dad’s Canon film SLR as a teenager! Back in those days it was a slow process as you had to post the rolls of film off or take them to Boots to get them developed, only to find they were out of focus or badly framed. These days the photography landscape has changed massively as most of us have a camera in our pockets most of the time – our phones!

As an animal artist who works entirely in the realms of detail and realism, working from photos is an essential part of my art practice. Whilst I do use other people’s photos, especially if it’s a species I can’t easily photograph myself, it enhances the creative process if I can work from my own photos. For one thing, I’m way less likely to create the same artwork as anyone else if it’s my own photograph!

Wildlife photography isn’t the easiest pastime, but there are some tips and tricks that make my life easier. Rather than a large DLSR with a huge zoom lens, I use a much cheaper and smaller superzoom bridge camera – in my case a Nikon Coolpix P950. I don’t get award winning super sharp photos as it has a very small sensor, but I find it’s good enough for me to draw from. The “bridge” part means it has a fixed lens, but with up to 83x zoom I find I don’t need anything else; I even use it to photograph the moon! The main disadvantage is the size, even though it’s smaller than a traditional wildlife setup, it’s still a big chunk of kit to carry if you’re taking holiday snaps!

This WAS a holiday snap taken with the big camera

As with anything, practice might not make perfect, but it’ll certainly help you improve! Get to know your camera and its settings and try photographing all kinds of animals, from pets and farm animals to birds in the garden and ducks on the pond! That way when you have chance to take a special wildlife photography trip you’re not fumbling around trying to find the right settings. You might even get a great photo when you don’t expect it, like my photo of a Mallard duck swimming across a lake at sunset - more on that photo below.

A bear up a tree! A good example of right place, right time

Wildlife parks and zoos are a great place to photograph non-native wildlife. It does require some patience though as you might not see all of the animals all of the time! If you’ve lucky enough to live close to an animal park, then consider buying an annual pass if that’s an option they offer. That way you can visit multiple times a year, increasing your chances of getting that shot. I tried many times to get a photo of the Lynx at Bristol Zoo Project, but they were often nowhere to be seen. I went on a grey miserable day in November, and they were both in full view – as it goes, they were about to be fed so they were impatiently waiting for their dinner!

It took many visits over a year and a half to get this shot!

It's a good idea to get used to using some kind of photo editing software, and if you can shoot in RAW rather than jpeg. RAW files are MUCH bigger than jpegs, but that’s because they contain a lot more information, which allows for much more options when it comes to editing, particularly when the exposure of colours aren’t quite right. I recently started using Adobe Lightroom, it maybe expensive, but it can work miracles, saving photos that might look otherwise unusable!

Before editing

Edited in Lightroom

Editing this photo meant I could use it to create my coloured pencil drawing "Sunset Swim". Prints and cards of "Sunset Swim" are available in my Folksy Shop or click on the image below.

"Sunset Swim" was drawn from my own reference photo, taken at Cwmbran Boating lake