Capturing the Wild: Safari Photography

Lesson 1: Introduction
Published: May 2014 with Rick Sammon

Duration: 1 hour 31 minutes

About Course

Join Rick Sammon, a Canon Explorer of Light, and discover tips, tricks, and techniques that can apply to anywhere your camera might take you. Rick draws on his experiences leading photo safaris in Africa to teach you how to prepare for your own safari, consider what gear to bring, the importance of developing a daily routine, and how to get the best photographs of the people, wildlife, and places that you will encounter.

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Hey, I'm Rick Sammon. Thank you so much for joining me for my newest class here on KelbyOne Photo Safari Story Telling. I hope you learn a lot, and I hope you have a lot of fun. My philosophy is, if you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong. Now, going out on a photo safari, it really is a ton of fun, but and here's the big but. It's also a lot of work. You're going to be working before, during and after your Photo Safari. You're going to be working before doing that ton of research on site. You're going to be out before sunrise, you'll be processing the pictures during the day, you're going to be out at night for that you might be out even on a night photo safari. This is really cool. When you get back home, you're going to be, well you might be processing your pictures, all throughout your shoot. But when you get back home, you're going to be saving your pictures. So it is a lot of work. But fear not, my friends. I've been going to Africa for about 15 years. I'm going to take you through the whole process in this class, here's what I'm going to cover. I'm going to give you an introduction as to what to expect on your whole photo safari I'm going to talk about preparing for the shoot. You know what the boy scouts say? Be prepared. You don't want negative surprises on your photo safari. You want positive surprises if you're prepared you're going to get fewer negative surprises, we are going to talk about your daily routine, from getting up early in the morning to staying out late. Of course I'm going cover wildlife photography. Most people go to Africa to photograph the wildlife. I'm going to tell you how to get great wildlife pictures, I'm going to talk technical but I'm also going to talk about he mood. Creating a mood in a picture because, the most important thing in photography, just like in music is the mood, is feeling is the emotion, so when you go out there, I want you to think about, how can I create a mood with my pictures, very very important, but I'm also going to talk about photographing in villages, in my other classes here on Kelby one you'll see, that I tell people my specialty is not specialized, because I like to do it all, but when it comes down to it, I really do love photographing people. So I'm going to give you my best tips, tricks and techniques for photographing people in the villages, it really helps to tell a story. I'm going to tell you how to get great landscape pictures yes, the wildlife pictures are going to be great, the people pictures are going to be great, but we are telling a whole story. You can get fantastic landscape pictures because the sun is great and it's dusty there, and the dust again that dust really adds to the feeling the moody emotion of your pictures. Now at the end, let me give you a couple of quick tips on processing your images. because, you're going to be on a safari vehicle, you're going to be walking around, you're going to be cropping your pictures, you're going to be enhancing your pictures, because you can't always follow my tip. The name of the game is fill the frame one of my simonisims[sp/], we can't always do that. So I'm going to give you a couple of quick tips so you can really create knockout images, using Photoshop and Lightroom. again I've been to Africa a few times been going for about 15 years so in this class I'm going to illustrate my tips tricks, and techniques using my pictures from my safari to Kenya, South Africa, Tanzania, and Botswana. Now just quickly there is a difference when you go on safari to Kenya and Tanzania, and Botswana and South Africa. In Kenya, and Tanzania you are going to see, maybe I'm not kidding tens of thousands of animals at one time, especially if go during the great migration, and we're going to talk about that you go to South Africa and Botswana you not going to see as many animals but you're going to get close to the animals also you go to Kenya and Tanzania if their's a kill and we're going to talk about the kills here, we're going to talk about the circle of life in this. if their's a kill all the guides get on the radio OK, so you have all this safari vehicles around the kills and the great side audience of coarse. You go to South Africa, Botswana you're not going to see this so you might be watching this, and might be saying men I would love to go to South Africa, I would love to go to Botswana, Kenya, Tanzania but maybe I can't go there right now, should I watch this class, of course because here's why. You could use most of this tips, if you go to a zoo, if you go to a safari park, if you go to a wildlife center. Check out this shot, I took this picture at Wild Ice in Montana. just one of the many places I go to shoot. I'm going to share some other pictures in the class from my other places I've been in United States were they have fantastic wildlife and give you fantastic wildlife photography possibilities, but we can go there and you could use the same tips, tricks and techniques for example this picture here, taken again at Wallace, name of the game is to tilt the frame, I shot as tight as I could. Here's my basic tip for wildlife photography if you're not doing the silhouette. if the eyes aren't in focus, if the eyes aren't well lit you've missed the shot, and I've missed the shot to. So we want to focus on the eyes just because you have an auto focus camera doesn't mean that the camera knows where to focus, so we have to do that, we have to pay attention. Look at the background here the background slightly out off focus we have to pay attention to our aperture we have to pay attention to our show to seek to freeze the action so we have to compose carefully we have to look at the lights. So I'm going to talk about all these things, yes they're great for going for a photo safari but you can go on a photo safari again to a local zoo, a local low wildlife park. Whats more wherever you go, you could use these tips. Check out these pictures here, I took on the top left in Mien-Ma just came back a couple of weeks ago you see this woman here, long neck woman you can use the same tips basically sidelined here to get a nice shot. If you go to Mien-Ma, Iceland, it's a landscape shot actually its a nice scape shot. Here you see everything in the scene and focus and behind me you see everything in the scene and focus. So this is what we're going to talk about, action at have commercial horses running in France, I'm going to show you how to freeze the action. Shoot this Eagles in Alaska the action is frozen shot type. Show you some digital darkroom trips, I took this picture in the middle in Bosco de la Perch in Mexico a the blast off all these birds take off at the same time, we're going to talk about that. And on the right, you see a polar bear. I exposed for the highlights there. My number one tip, when it comes to exposure is exposed to the highlights. If the highlights are over-exposed and washed out, you've missed the shots. So again, you could use these tips everywhere. OK, so let's start with the introduction, next to e slide or under each slide like you see here. You see I have the location, so I'm going to give you the location for each picture in this little presentation. When you go on safari, you're going to have amazing, I mean amazing wildlife encounters. These lions have been mating for three days. The male lion on the right wanted to mate, the female didn't want to mate, so she's chasing him away. I call this The Love-bite. You have to be ready to get a shot like once again you have to be prepared. This is taken on a 1/500th of a second with my 100- 400 mm image stabilization lens, we're going to get to gear a little later so you're going to have amazing, totally amazing wildlife encounters. You are also going to get what I call some dumb luck shots. If you're prepared, look at this shot. I call this shot Two Brothers. you're going to get dumb luck shots like this, you have to shoot a lot, you have to be out there. This is the key. You have to be there to get the shots. I'm also going to show you how we can use just a few digital dark room enhancements to take a shot like this to create a shot like this. All I did was darken the edges. Ansel Adams had a great expression. He had many great expressions. He said, a picture's not done until you darken the edges. so if you look at this shot, is nice and not sharp, but by darkening the edges, our attention goes right to the main subject. So we are going to get alot of dumb luck shots, post processing you're going to have down time throughout the day. Here I took the color out of the scene, when we take out some of the color or all the color, we take out some of the reality. When we take out some of the reality, our pictures can but not always look a little more creative so toward the end of the class, I'm going to give you my best digital darkroom tips, tricks and techniques, to turn basically a snap shot like this into a more creative image. Another thing you're going to get surprisingly close to the animals. If you're in a Jeep, or any type of safari vehicle, because the animals don't recognize you as food, which is actually a very, very good thing. So some people think they need wow! 600 mm lenses with teleconverters to do that, I've never taken a 600 to Africa. My longest lens has been a 400 mm lens with a 1.4X teleconverter. So you're going get really close to animals like this crested crane, that you see on the left, and this beautiful leopard that you see on the right. We're going to talk about composing and light a little bit later. If you go during the great migration you're going to see sights that not many people on the planet get to see. Here I'm at the Mara River the zebras basically what's going on here is the herbivours the zebras and the wildebeest they follow the rain around so they always have something to eat and the predators follow them around and so they always have something to eat. So it's kind of cool and you can predict where and the scientist can't predict actually where these beautiful animals are going to be. We are going to take some dramatic, I am going to show you how to take dramatic portraits, not of only of people, but also of the wildlife so if you like portraits and basically you know my friend Frank Doholf[sp?] here on kelby one some of the tips that he uses in his portraiture you could apply to your portraiture cause I use them too. We're going to take I'm going to show you how to take beautiful sunrise and sunset pictures. My best exposure tip to the highlights here I expose to the area around the sun I didn't want this to be over exposed and washed out. Just a quick tip here too crop creatively. Cropping gives us a second chance at composition, because you cant always get in exactly the right position when we're in Photo Safari. So think about actually I call it croposition is a combination of cropping and composition. Actually, I have a class here on KelbyOne called Composition, The Strongest Way of Seeing. Here's something else you're going to find on your Photo Safari. You're going to meet great people, this was taken on a foot safari, the man on the left there is our security guard, Francis is his name, person on the right is Moses, he was our guide. It's funny we go out every morning and I ask Francis, can I see the bullets, he says I have them in my pocket. I think that gun wasn't even loaded, I think he just had it there to give us a sense of security. You're also going to take lots of snapshots cause you're going to say, oh! look at this Lions, I want to get a shot like that, I got to get that, you're going to take snapshots, you may not want to put them in your slideshow where all your snapshots in the slideshow, editing is the key. You don't have to show the 5, 000 pictures that you're going to take but you're going to take lots of snapshots, just be ready for that. And here's the other thing, you're going to miss some shots. You saw that love bite shot I showed you before where the lions were mating, well these are the same lions. I can't believe I missed this shot. Look at the lion, his foot is cut off. Now, with content aware, and maybe with some other tricks I could add that back in, but, I missed the shot. So, quick tip here, shoot a little wider. Don't follow that tip that I usually give, the name of the game is to fill the frame. but here's the thing, so you can see it's a lot of work, it's a lot of fun. But when it all comes together, it's magical. This picture tells a story this is what you want to do with your pictures, you want to take pictures that tell a story. I love this shot because you see the adult elephants here protecting the little baby, in the middle of the frame and maybe his older brother or sister slightly in front of him. So this picture tells a story, you see this is crop two. I cropped almost all these pictures here. Like this one, this is cropped square. Here you see the mama giraffes, and the little babies. One of the babies is feeding so it really is a magical, magical experience.

Rick Sammon

Canon Explorer of Light and award-winning photographer Rick Sammon loves his day job. A tireless, prolific and inspirational image-maker, Rick, called by some “The Godfather of Photography,” is one of the most active photographers on the planet – dividing his time between creating images, giving seminars, developing on-line classes for KelbyOne, leading photo workshops, and making personal appearances. Rick’s enthusiasm for digital imaging is contagious. He is a man on a mission – a mission to make digital photography fun, creative, exciting and rewarding for others. Rick’s latest (and 36th) book is Creative Visualization for Photographers. With nearly 40 years of experience, this self-taught photographer has many accomplishments – and many more anticipated for the road ahead. As Rick suggests, “When you are through changing, you are through.” See www.ricksammon.com for more information. Rick can be contacted at mailto:ricksammon@me.com