Wildlife Photography How To

Photographing wildlife in their natural habitat has always been both challenging and rewarding. Whether you develop a business selling the use of the images or leading workshop tours, this field requires a special combination of passion and patience. In this article, we look at how and where wildlife photos can be sold as well as prospects to pursue and pitfalls to avoid. Special thanks to our four contributors: Sean Crane; Barbara Fleming (Fleming Safari Company, LLC); Eric Horan (Lowcountry Photo Safaris); and Josh Patterson.

The day started off pretty normal for scuba diver Craig Capehart who was sitting in a small inflatable boat in the Indian Ocean off the Coast of Mbotyl, South Africa. The seas were unusually calm as Capehart and friends were out hunting for sardines.

The tiny hummingbird is an amazing creature with the ability to move so fast that the human eye can only perceive the blur of wings and a splash of color. This amazing slow-motion video from National Geographic provides a sharp, clear view of how hummingbirds go about their lives.

British filmmaker John Downer has been capturing amazing footage of wildlife for years, but now he and his team at John Downer Productions have upped their game with the use of realistic robotic animals fitted with built-in spy cameras. As you can see from the video below it's all pretty amazing.

Greg Du Toit is a South African nature photographer and winner of the 2013 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award. He recently made these amazing images of elephants taking a bath while he was submerged in their watering hole at Botswana’s Mashatu Game Reserve.

Joel Sartore is an acclaimed National Geographic photographer with an ambitious quest like no other: His life-long goal is to document the plight of our planet's animals by making portraits of every species in captivity.

Gerrit Vyn is a Portland-based wildlife photographer with a deep commitment to conservation, and he pursues his passion by making intimate photographs of the animals that share our fragile planet. While Vyn has photographed a myriad of species, his images of birds are particularly compelling.