Wildlife Photography How To

Brendon Cremer is a wildlife and nature photographer known for his stunning images of exotic animals in Africa. Among his most spectacular photographs are those in which he shoots his subjects by moonlight.

The Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) in northeastern Alaska consists of 19,286,722 acres along the Alaskan North Slope, and supports a greater diversity of flora and fauna than anywhere else in the Arctic Circle. It was established in 1960 and is governed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. It receives only about 1,500 visitors a year.

Today’s camera gear is faster than ever and much of it is tailor-made for capturing any sort of motion or movement. So then why do so many photographers struggle to shoot compelling images of action? Part of it has to do with timing and part of it has to do with composition. Your camera and lens can only do so much and there’s more to a great action shot than simply capturing the moment and making sure it’s in focus. For this assignment, we were looking for images of anything from basketball to dance to wildlife, just as long as there was some kind of action in the scene. For the winning images, we were looking for great composition, effective use of backgrounds and scenery, and powerful emotion: human, animal, or otherwise. Here are our six favorites.

Without a doubt, this month's Wildlife and Nature assignment brought out the best in Shutterbug readers. There were so many excellent entries, we could've easily picked twice as many favorites and still felt we left some great shots out. In the end, we narrowed it down to 10 wildlife and nature images that truly stood out.

Long lenses are exciting to use because they enable us to view and capture images with far greater magnification than what we can see with our eyes. They also deliver dramatic, compressed perspectives and enable photographers to isolate subjects from busy backgrounds.

Poet Munia Khan one said, “If I were a flower, the hummingbird would be my favorite bee,” and these words could equally apply to photographer Tracy Johnson whose passion for these tiny birds turned into an obsession with some very beautiful results.

Photographing wildlife presents special challenges, especially if you own a compact camera. You may not have the powerful lenses that professionals use, but you can still do nicely with a moderate telephoto setting on your point-and-shoot camera, if it has one. As with household pets, wild animals...