So good.
Welcome to the Reptile Room and our little slice of the rainforest.
I wanted to show you
another important principle and that is conveying the full story.
Now these little cuties in here are poison dart Frogs.
They're a tiny little subject.
You might think,
the first option is going to go straight to a macro lens.
And while that is definitely one way of doing it,
today, I'm going to be doing something a little bit different.
I've got what's called a wide-angle macro lens.
It has a close focus distance so I can get close to the subject
and really capture the habitat that these frogs are found in.
And what we're going to do
is use a little secret weapon, which is the frog's favourite food.
They love their little ants and bugs and stuff like that.
Already, they're getting keen.
At no point am I
focusing in on just the frog itself.
So when I come down here,
I'm really trying to get all of that foliage in the background here.
Now this is really important because often the tendency
is to zoom right on to his little head, and that's fine.
But it's really special to be able to get everything else
going on in the background.
And it tells more of a complete story about your subject.
So never be afraid to take the wide-angle out
and see if you can get a little bit closer.
Alright now.
(Laughs) When you're a photographer,
you end up putting yourself in very awkward positions.
You've got to become the subject, become the frog
Right. Onto the next one. See you mate.
See you little frogster.
Have a good one.
The last core principle that I want to teach you guys
is knowing your subject and how to capture
images of more difficult animals.
Now birds can be incredibly challenging
because let's face it, they're never holding still.
And so I've got my telephoto lens here,
and I want to show you the importance of being ready.
Put yourself in the best position.
Understand your subject. Which animal you're going to be photographing.
And today we've got an absolute legend,
and his name is Queto, and he's going to show us that.
And here he is.
So he's going to be flying back and forth
and showing us how to get birds in flight.
So of course, it is a little different to how you find these guys in the wild.
But it still gives you a really good idea of what you need to do
and what settings you need to use to be able to capture that fast motion.
It's all about fast shutter speed and being ready for that shot.
I can't stress it enough. With wildlife photography,
you might have a bird flying straight at you,
so you've always got to be ready to go.
OK, here comes the first flight.
Now you can hear when I'm shooting, I've got a fast shutter speed,
so that means the camera,
when it takes a photo, it captures that action really quickly.
If this was in the wild and I wouldn't know when he's going
to fly, I'd actually set it to an automatic ISO setting.
So that means you can be ready for any situation.
So if I'm just walking around in the bush
and all of a sudden a bird starts flying,
I don't have to think about settings.
I've got it set automatic ISO, the aperture I want.
So that means I can start shooting.
You never want to miss that first shot.
It's usually the best stuff.
Alright, let's go for another flight. Here we go.
Good stuff, mate.
Oh, great stuff.
So you really want to try to be as minimally invasive as possible,
you know, you want to kind of become part of the environment and understand how
they operate and how you can get as close as possible to them
without disturbing them in any way.
(Shutter clicking)
Oh, great stuff.
You did well.
Oh, look, those wings!
Good job.
Alright. Well, thanks very much, guys!
Have a good day, Queto.
See you mate.
Good job.
Hey guys, welcome back into the editing suite.
I'm going to start with the macaw and this is really going
to show you what I was talking about, understanding your subject.
Now this was all about understanding the way in which these animals move.
You have to sort of in a way, predict
at what point those wings are going to be completely stretched.
Macaws will kind of have wings stretched.
They tuck their wings back in,
push their elbows forward, and then they come out with another one.
And so that long extension that is when you want to get the shot,
when they're wings are tucked up like this, it can look nice.
That might be the kind of shot that you're looking for.
But for the most part, you want those nice extended wings to really show the colour.
And so that was about planning for at what point
in his flight he was going to get that first extension.
So it was definitely very tricky, but I'm really happy with how this turned out.
When all else fails,
Put your camera on an automatic mode with a high shutter speed,
so that if that action happens, you can point your camera, take the shot
really quickly, then you can go back and start to change settings around later.
But for something like this, you want to be very, very versatile.
So that's the first one.
Now, the last principle that we learned about was telling a story.
Photography at its heart is trying to tell a story about whatever
subject you're capturing, whether that's a person,
whether it's a place or in my case, most of the time it's a little animal.
Now this is one of the shots I got.
This is exactly what I was talking about.
I could have gone for the zoom in, really nice and tight
and gotten a pretty good full shot of this guy.
And that works.
I can always crop in and and have this guy full frame,
but I decided to focus on him and then actually pull out,
pull the image out of it, zoom all the way out and it shows you
the entire story. It shows that he's in this beautiful rainforest habitat.
You can see the nice little rocks behind him, a little friend there.
I think that's another frog just poking his little head out over there.
And you can really see the entire story.
And it is very important when you're taking a shot to think about first:
What do you want to showcase? And in this shot,
I wanted to showcase the habitat. Well, there you have it.
Those are the four main principles
of photography that I think about before I go into any shoot.
But I really want to stress that this is just a guide.
I hope that you can learn something from it.
But I really want you guys to make it
your own. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
So whatever you want to photograph, however, you want to go about it.
Don't let anyone tell you that you have to follow any kind of strict rules.
It's totally up to you. So get out there,
have some fun, and, yeah, photography rules!
Thanks, guys. See you next time.