Wildlife and Animal Photography

I remember seeing this video when it first came out and it stuck with me. Then, while planning a shoot with some lion cubs this coming weekend (you may launch jealousy fuelled insults my way for that), I looked it up again. When photographer Chris McLennan attached a DSLR to a remote control 4x4 car and then drove it across the plains of Botswanna in to prides of lions, it yielded — rather expectedly — unique and beautiful results.

When National Geographic calls and asks you to take on a project that involves capturing one of the most photographed places on the planet, how do you come away with something new or unique? Six photographers took on this challenge and shared their stories and images in this short video.

Whether your subject is wildlife, landscapes, sports or some other type of distance-related photography, using a tripod is a must for stable, clear images. Yes, there are workarounds, and some photographers insist they don't need a tripod. Award-winning nature photographer Steve Perry has put together an easy to watch video on techniques that work for him when he's using long lenses to capture his subjects.

We've covered photographer Ty Foster's "Lick" series before, but his latest creation, "Lick Puppies," takes this a step further by using only puppies and their particularly tiny tongues. Every puppy in this series is busy licking its nose, just coming up from licking some organic peanut butter — the choice lick-inducing food of the viral animal photographer.

Tsavo, a region in Kenya, contains the world's largest elephant population, and thus, it is a prime target both for poachers and conservationists. Nonetheless, policing the 8,150-square-mile area is a daunting task. With some clever math and the help of drones, though, Penn State University researchers are helping to make that task much easier.

Nothing beats cute like cute with a cause, which is exactly what Slovenia-based photographer Katja Jemec did with her adorable photo series, "I Looked Up and There You Were."

"We all have the ability to be creators of hope," notes Conservation Photographer Thomas Peschak. Take ten minutes to explore the world of a man whose work embodies that every day.

It's no secret the impact humans have had on Earth and its other inhabitants. We often see the changed landscapes brought forth by human life and modern society as signs of triumph and accomplishment, but with these come the lost homes of those animals that once inhabited the land upon which society now sits. Nick Brandt has captured these changes in a unique and arresting fashion.

My faith in humanity just took a nosedive. We've seen plenty of people injuring themselves pursuing the prospect of social media accolades, but now, the pursuit of likes has taken on an exploitative nature and has killed an innocent creature in the process.

With approximately 3.4 million cats entering animal shelters every year in the U.S. alone, the need for adoption is stronger than ever. That's why Fashion Stylist Ryen Blaschke and Commercial Photographer Shaina Fishman teamed up for "Cats in Hats," a wonderful series featuring rescue cats and kittens that are currently up for adoption.

I don't have specific numbers. I don't even have vague numbers. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me Adobe's mobile photo editing apps have seen a huge success. The biggest reason: they're free. And the second: they really work, which makes the first reason even better. Today, Adobe updated two of these apps, Photoshop Mix and Photoshop Fix, with support for split view in iOS 9, for the screen size of the iPad Pro, and for the pressure and tilt sensitivity of the Apple Pencil for use on the iPad Pro.

Keith Ellenbogen is an underwater photographer whose work centers on marine conservation, while Allan Adams is a theoretical physicist whose work revolves around fluid dynamics inside black holes. When they met at a party in 2013, they realized they could combine their talents to produce gorgeous video of some of nature's most interesting marine life.

When people think of visiting the Everglades, wading around neck deep, alligator infested waters isn't exactly what most folks have in mind. For Florida-born photographer Mac Stone, this is what he calls his office. Stone has been steadily developing his work in conservation, particularly of wetlands. He recently gave a compelling speech at a TedTalks event, discussing not only his evocative work but importance of the wild areas he works in.

Making its start as a wildly popular Tumblr blog, the “Black Dogs Project” was created by Massachusetts-based portrait photographer Fred Levy. The goal of Levy’s project is to bring to light the reality of black dog syndrome, which is an observance that black dogs tend to always be adopted last from shelters. Now made into an inspiring hardbound photo book, I’d like to share some of my favorite cute doggy photos from “The Black Dogs Project” and give an overview of the charming stories within.

YouTuber Michael Delaney found a pit full of rattlesnakes and, despite anyone's best suggestions, didn't turn back. Instead, armed with a GoPro on the end of a stick, Delaney recorded the scene, most of during which the only audible audio was the collective rattling of the bunch. Eventually, repeated strikes from multiple snakes knock the GoPro off of its mount and into the middle of the pit (good luck getting that one back). Put it some headphones, put the video on full screen... I dare you not to flinch at the first good strike...

A few weeks ago, I shared the second episode of the video series "Off the Beaten Track," where photographer Chris Schmid visited the land of the Maasai people, photographing their culture and the wild animals of the National Reserve in Kenya. Chris recently released the third episode where he explores a much cooler climate. Svalbard is one of the most remote places in the Northern Hemisphere. This episode is beautifully shot with the DJI Inspire 1 and DJI Zenmuse X5, giving you a new look into the quickly melting ice and the polar bears who live there.  

Grumpy Cat, Maru, the Master of Boxes, and... Chandoha? Before the internet was even a twinkle in the world's collective eye, Walter Chandoha was setting the standard of quality and well, cuteness in cat photography.

Are you as stealthy as a fog horn? Do you have all the grace of a dirigible in a sudden windstorm? Certain genres of photography — wedding and wildlife photography in particular — require a certain physical tact, an ability to be unseen. Check out our tips on how to capture the focus of an event without becoming the focus of the event. 

We see computer-generated effects every day of our lives, but very few of us fully appreciate the amount of time and talent they take to create. It's easy to believe that these effects and characters are "computer-generated," but in reality, very talented artists are the ones creating this photo-realistic content; computers are simply the tool.

I happened across this serene video of a tiny kitten befriending Japanese wildlife photographer Mitsuaki Iwago as he was filming for his NHK TV series, "Wildlife Photographer Mitsuaki Iwago's World Cats Travelogue". While being lulled by the tranquility of the scene I couldn't help but think how amazing our craft is, that we can make a living doing something so incredibly delightful. Iwago-san is fortunate enough to travel the world filming and photographing cats in the streets.

Photographer Chris Schmid's video series "Off the Beaten Track" take a behind the scenes look at his travels as an outdoor and travel photographer. In his latest episode, he travels to Masai Mara National Reserve in Narok County, Kenya. The park is named after tha Maasai people, and known for it's lions, cheetahs, and annual migration of gazelles, zebras, and wildebeest.  

Going through a breakup can be hard. Especially when your significant other leaves you nothing but the dog. That’s exactly what happened to Rafael Mantesso. On his 30th birthday, his wife walked out leaving him with nothing else besides their bull terrier, Jimmy, whom the wife named after her favorite shoe designer, Jimmy Choo.

Are you doing well in photography? Do you have a cause you believe in? Your skills and pictures can help the world more than you might have thought.

Most dog or cat owners have had to use an Elizabethan collar at one point or another with their pet. “It’s a necessary and beneficial part of the healing process, but to them it’s like being put in timeout,” photographer Ty Foster explained. In this photo series of his, he visually expressed the emotional hardships that our animal brethren have to endure while wearing what he refers to as “the cone of shame.” In the series, Foster goes out of his way to show the trials and tribulations that come along with wearing this shameful collar.

As nature photography has grown, so has its critics. Wardens, legislators, and police officers have begun to push for laws that would better protect animals in nature and create more concrete boundaries by which a potential shooter would follow. Are we, as photographers, the new law-breaching intruders, à la poachers? Are we destroying nature?

As if you didn't already have enough competition as a photographer it now seems the animal kingdom is trying to get a piece of our pie. In New Zealand there is an Octopus named Rambo, trained and equipped by Sony, to do your job. World, meet the first Octographer.

What happens when one of the world’s foremost portrait photographers decides to turn to photograph still life paintings instead of people? There are no two ways about it - Jill Greenberg is fascinating. Her new work is beautiful, but there is also a clear artistic statement behind it. In this exclusive, we get to understand her direction and motivations behind "Paintings", her latest body of work.

It's certainly no secret that the United States’ 58 National Parks are home to some of the most incredible landscapes in the world. The sheer number of parks alone is quite impressive, but the vast range of diversity is even more notable. From the towering rock faces of Zion Nation Park in Utah to the endless mountain ranges housed by Alaska’s Denali National Park, the United States contains breathtaking parks no matter what corner of the country you happen to reside in. In what is most likely aimed to regain visitors to these often overlooked gems, the United States Department of the Interior runs a very well maintained Instagram account to showcase our national treasures. Here are just 20 of their awe-inspiring images.

I will start this article off by saying that I am not a pet photographer. I am a portrait photographer that typically captures humans for magazines and ads. However, a couple years ago I started a pit bull charity (Not A Bully) and it unexpectedly led me to some jobs photographing rescue animals. If you're reading this, you already know that capturing animal portraits is a unique challenge in itself. I've done some of the difficult leg work for you and put together a list of tips to hopefully make your next in-studio pet portrait session much easier.

U.K. commercial photographer Karl Taylor takes us behind the scenes on a rather exciting and unique photo shoot where the goal is to create an animal portrait of a hawk during flight. There are so many variables to this concept that even with a trained bird of prey, Taylor still ran into a little bit of trouble at the beginning of the shoot.

Being a dog lover and person that runs a dog charity on the side, I am always curious as to what my rescue Pit Bull / Boxer Emma does when I leave the house. I always imagine that she just sleeps in my bed, but my family tells me she cries and stares at the door when I leave town. After seeing this first video, I've decided I will be strapping a camera to her to see what she does. Read below to see how you can too!

As soon as you think you’ve seen it all, something comes along that proves you wrong. In this case, it’s pet photos (bear with me here…). The idea came to German photographer Julia Christie while she was working on a commissioned project for an animal pharmaceutical product. She ended up scouting for dog models at “different dog shows, in dog schools, and vet practices,” and then asked the owners to bring their pets to a studio in Berlin, Germany. She was overwhelmed when almost a hundred dogs showed up, and this was the beginning of her latest project, “Freestyle.”

What happens when you dream of a surreal image that beckons you to recreate it as a photograph? For Canon Explorer of Light, Tyler Stableford, it meant heading to Mexico in search of whale sharks, with an underwater model, ready to face the challenges that laid ahead of them them in an effort to create an image that was as compelling as it was personally rewarding.

I have to say, it's been a blast seeing where Carli Davidson's passion for dogs has taken her, starting way back in 2012 when I first featured her on Fstoppers, and again last year with the release of her book Shake. Today marks the official release of her new book, Shake Puppies, and she somehow managed to create a book of cute that surpasses that of her original printed piece. 

As the old saying goes, "mess with the bull and you will get the horns", is what one photographer from New Zealand found out the hard way. Not everyone thinks that drones are cool toys. The owner of the drone claims to have rescued the ram from a farmer who was going to put him down because he was so aggressive.

In the last few years, advances in technology have allowed for filmmakers to do some pretty amazing things. With the accessibility of cameras like the Go-Pro, the gap between amateur and pro is narrowing. Enter award-winning wildlife filmmaker John Downer and his quest to push the remarkable. Filmmakers are putting these high-resolution spy cameras in everything from fake rocks to swimming ducks and to motorized piles of snow... and the resulting footage is remarkable.

Drones are probably the hottest gadgets in the photography industry this year. We see them being used for commercial aerial shoots, for news coverage, for wedding photography and, well, just for fun. The guys at 'Earth Touch' recently decided to see if they can create a drone that instead of going up to the sky, will be able to go down under the water. After planning on paper, they executed their idea and built a fully functional underwater 'drone' submarine. Check out the BTS and the final result.

The ever talented team at Scanline VFX have posted their most recent BTS video of the popular wight fight scene from the Game of Thrones Season 4 Finale. In this run down you can see the incredible detail and heavy visual effects work that goes into each and every scene from that fight. This one sequence has been remored to be one of the most expensive scenes created for the show.

In a rather raw video posted to Youtube earlier today, a man jumps off some rocks and into the water only to find his friends screaming, "Shark!" behind him. Captured from a GoPro he attached before jumping in, this video gives us get a pretty good POV glimpse of what that would feel like. What would you do in that situation?

Tamron's VC technology can't be beat: it's simply the best option out there for any type of optical stabilization. I can't live without it when it comes to video, and it's so good it often makes using a steady cam unnecessary. Common complaints with Tamron is often the build quality and sharpness, so let's see how their latest super zoom, the 150-600 f/5-6.3 handled a wildlife shoot.

"It is not about getting as close as possible, but to capture the feeling of being there. I don't want to just look into their world, I want to be a part of it." Asgeir Helgestad is a photographer from Norway whose wildlife imagery seems to step inside the world of the animal. In this short video, Asegir explains why he chose this pursuit, and what he hopes to convey with his work. Worth the watch in HD and fullscreen.

Brandon Cawood, from Dalton GA, has taken appreciating first responders to the next level. What began as a personal project to photograph local EMS personnel, soon blew up and went viral. Cawood captures priceless moments in the daily lives of firefighters, police and other public safety personnel. He has a movie poster style and pulls it off in a flawless manner.

Two years ago, I adopted a lovable Pitbull mix named Emma. She's afraid of thunder, loves belly rubs, is sweet with kids and great with other animals. Sadly, a lot of the general public perceive my Emma as a monster, and that's probably why over half a million Pitbulls are put to sleep in the US alone each year. I decided to use my photography to start a positive PR campaign called Not A Bully to help change the way people view Pitbulls.

Here at Fstoppers we featured many animal-related GoPro videos in the past [here are a few as a reminder: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5], and all are unique and interesting. Some are visually stunning. But this video taken by a pelican takes home the award for the most beautiful video ever taken by an animal.

Philadelphia-based photographic artist Isa Leshko turned her camera onto aging farm animals, horses and dogs to create a powerful study of mortality and aging. The body of work, captured with medium format film, is currently exhibited at the Corden Potts gallery in San Francisco and was inspired by the caregiving process she underwent with her parents.