Wildlife Photography How To

Right off, Charles Glatzer tells me that when wildlife is the subject, there are two kinds of photographers: those who photograph wildlife and those who are wildlife photographers.

Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! Ok, maybe not tigers this month but the other two made the cut in some of the winning photos for this assignment. Wildlife and nature are favorite subjects for Shutterbug readers and, as expected, we reviewed a ton of amazing images from readers in these categories. The tough part was narrowing it down to just six favorites but we think we’ve picked some fabulous images to spotlight here.

Anuar Patjane Floriuk, popularly known as Anuar Patjane, has been scuba diving for 17 years. Much of his photography in the past has been focused on travel around the globe, but lately he’s been giving in more and more to his fascination with the sea. He’s been shooting underwater for five of those 17 years and finds the camera a natural extension of his inner being, helping him explore and fathom pelagic life, especially whales, and himself in the process.

The state of Wisconsin is teaming up with NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in a unique project to identify the state’s wildlife populations with the installation of 5,000 strategically placed trail cameras. The “Snapshot Wisconsin” initiative employs remote sensing satellites and a global crowd-sourced database to create what aims to be the “richest and most comprehensive caches of wildlife data for any spot on our planet.”

Biologist ­turned photographer Ronan Donovan likes to get up close and personal with bears and wolves, and in this intriguing video he discusses his first project for National Geographic magazine, which appears in the May issue. His assignment was to photograph the animals in their natural habitat, and he did that and more.

When 14^th century poet Piers Plowman said “Patience is a virtue” he could have been channeling the future work of National Geographic Photographer Charlie Hamilton James who captured this amazing image after making over 200,000 photographs with a motion–activated camera in Grand Teton National Park. James was intent on getting images of bears and wolves with the Teton Mountains in the background, and he sure came up with a winner!