MY WILDLIFE EXPERIENCES

Dheeraj Paul

- Dheeraj Paul

Wildlife photography looks glamorous at the very first sight, but it needs lots of patience and concentration. We may need to wait for hours and hours for the perfect picture. As a Nature and Wildlife photographer one needs to love and respect nature. Capturing animals and birds in their habitat is very important. It’s not a wise idea to capture only tight close-ups all the time because environment and their living condition always bring dimensions to the imagery. The foremost is to capture action and emotions of the species we are documenting.

Kenya, especially Masai Mara, is one of my favourite destinations to capture real time action. We can photograph a great variety of animals and birds. Photographers from all over the world visits National Parks of Kenya to satisfy their love for nature.

I personally love the vast grasslands along with animals at every step you take. Jungles are generally unpredictable, and so is the wildlife, but as a nature lover, one needs to anticipate and wait for the right moment. Keep your gears ready; as there are no boundaries for wildlife, they can appear anywhere.

I love working on Manual Exposure Mode, wherein I decide Shutter Speed according to the action, f-number according to depth-of-field required, and keep the ISO flexible on Auto, so that it changes with the change in lighting situation. We can set ISO limit as well in Auto ISO. I work on 100-6400 ISO normally. For example, for a normal Lion pride sitting or moving slowly, I keep the shutter speed of 1/500s, aperture at f/8 or f/11 to get fair amount of sharpness among the Lion family, and ISO on Auto, so that if they move into the shade of trees, the ISO can go up with change in lighting. For any change in exposure, we need to control through Exposure Compensation.