WILDLIFE AT ALL APERTURES

Pro nature photographer Andy Parkinson shares his advice for capturing creative animal images

One of the greatest mistakes that a wildlife photographer can make, amateur or professional, is to disregard the wealth of benefits that can be found by shooting at a wide variety of aperture settings. So often it seems the pursuit of bokeh, or diffuse surroundings, consumes the imagination, limiting the myriad ways that individual encounters can be viewed, and as such the diversity of images that could potentially be produced.

The aperture is created by a set of sliding blades in a lens, which control the size of the hole through which light can pass to the sensor. Controlling the size of the hole in your lens might be crucial to making a good exposure, but it also allows you to get creative with sharpness and blur. Large apertures such as f/2.8 increase the blur, whereas choosing a higher f-number brings more of a scene into sharp focus. Over the following pages I’ll demonstrate just what can be achieved by stepping back for a moment and giving every individual opportunity more consideration when it comes to your aperture choice. After you’ve had a refresher in the basics of what aperture is and how it can be used, see which situations lend themselves to different apertures, from f/2.8 all the way up to f/32.

First, learn how to shoot dramatic, expansive habitat shots – images that almost look more like paintings, with front to back sharpness and filled with detail and narrative. Then, discover how to produce detailed and intimate close-ups that are ethical but texturally rich.

Your aperture is one of the single most important aspects of control that you have in crafting images, so let us explore together what can be achieved.