New generation smartphones are no less than DSLRs, and you can capture amazing moments on your phone. Follow these simple tips to capture wildlife through your smartphone.
Wildlife photography is a soul-stirring experience where you get to form an ineffable bond with the forces and cycles of nature. Unfortunately, during your safari trip to Africa, there are lots of factors that could leave you with only your smartphone for a camera.
For example, you could be off to the remote areas with no powerlines. Also, the perfect chase might happen when your camera is still in the bag. So, how do you use your smartphone camera to take capture those moments?
I recently traversed the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya and the Serengeti National Park in Tanzania with only a smartphone to freeze the dreamlike beauty of these destinations.
And guess what! I came home with incredibly beautiful safari photos. The trick? I compensated the lack of a Camera with some unusual photography tricks that helped me take some surreal pictures.
Read on know how I took DSLR like photographs with only a smartphone, a telephoto lens, and some clever photography maneuvers.
1. Using the sun right
Using the sun right is the 101 of wildlife photography. Ideally, the sun should be used as a backlight for your subject to give it a wonderful yellow or orange glow, depending on the time of the day.
Avoid the harsh white light of the naked sun as it over-exposes your photographs. The best wildlife shots are shot with a partly cloudy sky.
A thin layer of cloud filters the sunlight beautifully, giving your subject just the right amount of focus.
If you want to include the elements of weather like dew, mist, rain, etc. into your photography, then the direction of sunlight becomes crucial.
To get wildlife shots with the sun in the frame, try to shoot with the dawn and dusk sun. The rising and setting sun provides a sublime canopy of golden light that gives photographers a mellow glow around their subjects.
For a short window of an hour or so, the dim light of the sun also provides a creative halo for capturing silhouettes shots of wildlife.
If your motive for tourism is photography, opt for a personalized safari over group tours.
Private safari holidays allow you a lot of flexibility in the travel schedule. You get to choose where and when to venture into the parks and for how long you can spend at a specific holiday destination.
I booked my private trip to Masai Mara and Serengeti with AjKenyaSafaris.com, and I fully endorse them. They anticipated the perfect trip for me, and wholeheartedly welcomed and accommodated my request for early morning game and night game drives.
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The early morning and late evening rides resulted in some breath-taking images of the Mara. I took the help of another great East African tour operator, Masaimarasafari.in to cover the Serengeti National park.
2. Use smartphone lens
Smartphone/telephoto lens converts your smartphone into a camera powerhouse that can take a wide variety of shots.
The lens compensates for every shortcoming of shooting with a smartphone. I used a mid-range Adding lens to your smartphone increases magnification, depth, sharpness, and contrast.
However, the icing on the cake for photography with a smartphone lens is the coveted shallow depth of field and increased shutter speed while capturing fast-moving objects.
Some modern smartphones offer up to f/1.8 aperture that helps you to mitigate the shakiness of freehand photography. The aperture of your camera decides the amount of light that gets into your camera.
The lens helps you to control the area of light gathering and create those stunning frozen-in-time pictures without any blur.
A good lens will allow you to take closer shots of your subject with losing focus. It is also great for introducing the bokeh effect to your photographs.
3. Use a binocular to increase focal length
The focal length is the length between your camera and your subject.
One of the disadvantages of smartphones is the limitation of pixels and a wide-angle of view. This affects proper magnification and focuses on your subjects.
One of the simplest tricks to capture great wildlife photography on a smartphone is to use binoculars to increase the focal length and reduce the wide-angle of view.
It not only gives you a great zoom without any pixel loss but also brings a beautiful focus on the subject. You can also buy a binocular mount to help align the lens of the smartphone and the binocular.
4. The rule of thirds
A common mistake that novice photographers make is placing their subject in the middle of the photograph.
This does provide a wonderful focus but removes the dynamic side of story-telling through photographs, which is quite important during wildlife photography.
One easy tip for wildlife photography is the rule of thirds, which gives your photographs some beautiful aesthetics.
Under this rule, mentally divide your screen into 9 equal-sized boxes and try to place your subject at the intersection of the lines. This moves the subject away from the center in either of the four directions.
Psychologically, humans are wired to find beauty within an off-center composition. This rule works wonderfully during wide shots and frames where the environment is of higher priority than the subject.
It is a great composition trick that blends your subject nicely with the environment and gives an excellent depth to all your photographs. It is a natural trick to make your pictures more artistic.
However, the central composition is not always bad and can also create stunning photographs.
You should take your time to judge the composition and decide on the individual merit of each photograph.
5. Use photo editing apps to get your desired effects
The advantage of using a smartphone camera is it's fully digital. You can make powerful changes to your images to create DSLR like effects.
However, the first thing you need to do is to shoot your images in a raw file that are uncompressed files that give you extra flexibility while editing your photos.
You need a third-party app like Adobe Photoshop Lightroom that will help you take photographs in raw format instead of the commonly used jpeg. You can now easily stylize your photos by adjusting brightness, saturation, contrast, curves layers, etc.
In the case of wildlife photography, the sky is made more vivid and telling by changing the color and contrast. Keep experimenting with different pre-set features to get the most out of your smartphone photographs.
