Mediocre Monday: Awkward Animals

There's an old adage in show business that goes, "never work with animals or children." The same could be said for photography. Sure, there are a lot of photographers that make wonderful careers out of taking pictures of wildlife, but animals pose a number of challenges that we have to overcome if we want to take a decent shot. I, for one, have a lot of respect for the National Geographic photogs who schlep a thousand pounds of extremely expensive equipment into a hostile environment, and still manage to capture some candid photos of wild animals doing whatever it is they do.

So today, in honor of International Animal Photography Day, a holiday I made up for this blog post, I present some of my attempts at animal photography. First up, a squirrel.

At least, I think it's a squirrel. I didn't have the camera anywhere near set up for the lighting conditions, so the shutter speed was all wrong, and the camera moved while the shutter was open. Next attempt, a crow.

This one, I spotted a murder (a group of crows) on the side of the road and pulled over. Not wanting to scare the crows, I rolled down the passenger window and attempted to shoot out the open window while leaning across the center console of my truck. It didn't work. The camera wasn't really set up for it.

Well after that I decided that I really wanted to get a shot of a wild animal. Any wild animal. In this case it ended up being a flying rat. (Seagull)

As you can see I used the "snap as many as possible and hope one turns out" technique.  It's surprisingly effective, and something I would have never tried when I shot film. Just so you and I are on the same page here, that set of photos is a sampling of the pictures of that gull. There are more. I only ended up putting one into my portfolio. For reference, here's the final pick, edited:

So that's it. I'm pretty much stuck with that technique. I'm a lumbering oaf, so sneaking up on a critter isn't exactly easy for me. I'm also not made of money, so a $14k super-telephoto is completely out of my price range.

To try to put a bow on this one, I'll say this: Get out there and keep shooting. Take lots of pictures. One of them will be what you are looking for.