Hi! I'm Nikon Ambassador Kristi Odom.
I'm a wildlife photographer and filmmaker based out of Longmont Colorado,
and today, I'm here to share with you 5 tips
on how to put more emotion into your wildlife images.
My mission has always been to connect people emotionally to wildlife,
and to show that animals have personality and characters
and are intelligent beings.
I wanna use photography to get people to stop objectifying animals
and to actually feel deeper for the subjects.
So, here are my 5 tips!
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Tip #1: do your research.
The more you can learn about your subjects before you go out and photograph,
the deeper understanding you can give to your viewers on the image.
For instance, I recently photographed the humpback whales in Marea,
and I started to learn about how the calves brush against the mom as a sign of endearment.
So, when I was out there, I was looking for that moment,
and, sure enough, I got a shot.
The baby rubbed right against the mother,
and the light hit it right at the right spot.
And, to me, that produced a more emotional image
because it showed that behavior.
Animals have a much different way of showing their emotions
and showing how they feel than we do.
So the more we can educate ourselves on their unique behaviors,
the more we can honor that,
and the more we can people to emotionally connect more to wildlife.
Number 2: ask yourself how you're feeling.
If you're photographing, and the scene itself is chaotic,
or if the animal has a lot of movement and motion,
and you're seeing that speed,
how can you incorporate that into the narrative?
When I was photographing the bears at Brooks Falls,
I remember seeing the stillness of the bear against the chaos of the moving water.
And, in order to incorporate that scene, I slowed my shutter speed down,
so that it was just fast enough to catch the bear still,
but slow enough to get the movement of the water.
What are you feeling in that scene, and how can you incorporate that?
Are you feeling simplicity?
Are you feeling the air and the wind?
Are you feeling the chaos of the water?
What are you feeling, and how can you put that into your image?
Number 3: think about how the viewer
and how you want the viewer to feel when they look at your image,
and there's all sorts of different ways of photographing
to project different feels on your viewers.
Maybe you like that light and airy look,
and, by giving you frame a little bit too much light,
you can produce that.
Maybe you liked a more darkened and solitary feel,
more sophistication and darkness,
so photographing a little bit darker can help that.
There are so many different picture controls in the camera.
Picture controls that really show the vibrance of color in a scene,
so by selecting those, you can bring out that brilliance and bring out some drama.
Or you can mute a scene to make it feel more simplistic.
You can also do those things in post processing
to make people feel a different way when they're viewing your images.
Number 4:
Sometimes the most important thing we can do as photographers
is put our camera down!
Put our camera down and observe what we're seeing,
so that we can really understand and predict what's gonna happen.
I remember the beginning of the pandemic
one of the things I kept photographing was the red winged black bird,
right at this office building right across the street from where we live.
And I just went out for days, and I watched these birds.
And it was beautiful how the males would puff up their shoulders and sing to the females
and the females how they would respond.
And the more I started watching, the more I understood,
the more I could predict when the behavior was gonna happen.
So, sometimes the most important thing we can do
is to allow ourselves to observe our subjects
so we can find things to bring in
so that we can show something a little bit deeper about our subjects.
Number 5: don't be afraid to be you.
I don't wanna take photos that look like--[inaudible]
If you Google a specific animal,
may it be the bears of Brooks Falls
or the elephants of the Maasai Mara,
when you Google those, I don't wanna take a photo
that's gonna look like what you see on the first page of Google.
Photography is an art that we can celebrate ourselves and our own unique perspectives.
Put yourself, put your quirks,
put your own feelings, put your own imprint,
your own voice onto your images
and do something different.
Bring that in to the industry.
If you have a background in architecture,
maybe it's using the lines from the trees to move people's eye around the frame.
If you have a background in marine biology,
using a little bit of your knowledge and what you know from there,
to actually incorporate and make your scene better.
Don't be afraid to be you.
My background: I used to compete in mathematics,
and I am obsessed with patterns.
The more I photograph nature, the more I see my obsession with patterns coming out,
in the way I shoot and the way I produce my images.
Don't be afraid to be you.
[music]
Thank you guys so much for tuning in!
Those were my 5 tips on how to put more emotions into your wildlife images.
I would love to see the results!
Thank you so much, and thank you B&H
Have a great day!