Monika Mansell

An encounter with a wolf yields a great result

Monika SAYS: I took this picture of a Hudson Bay wolf in a controlled environment in Germany. The wolf was roughly 15 metres in front of me and he was facing the opposite direction most of the time. To shoot at eye level, I lay flat on my stomach and waited patiently until he turned his head. Then I used a single AF point right between the eyes. It was shot at 210mm on a Canon EOS 1D X with a EF 70-200 f/2.8 IS II USM lens and a 1.4x III teleconverter. The exposure was 1/200 sec at f/7.1, ISO 5,000.

ANDREW SAYS: I think good wildlife photography should try to go beyond being a pure record of an animal. In this case I think you’ve achieved this by getting such great eye contact in the shot. I can feel that intense stare that the wolf gave you; it’s almost enough to send chills down my spine.

You’ve done all the basics absolutely right, waiting for the moment the wolf looked at you and getting yourself down to his eye level. Focusing is excellent too. By picking your spot carefully, sharpness is excellent and exactly where it needs to be. To get a shutter speed where you could successfully shoot a sharp image, you’ve had to push the ISO right up to ISO 5,000, and there is some noise showing in the shadows – but that doesn’t matter.

To my eye, the white balance looks slightly wrong, particularly in the wolf’s fur. If you’ve shot raw, then a slight tweak will resolve this. Also the green ‘hotspot’ in the background top left could be toned down a fraction to make it less distracting.