Dynamic Wildlife Photography

Rating:
Summary: Beyond Documentary
Review: You have to agree completely with the basic thesis of "Dynamic Wildlife Photography". Readily available modern camera equipment makes it easy for anyone who cares to make a technically perfect picture of an animal. Advances in travel allow photographers to go anywhere to photograph even the rarest of animals. As a result viewers have become accustomed to seeing good wildlife pictures. As a further result, to get viewers' attentions, photographers have to go beyond merely documenting an animal.

The authors suggest ways to accomplish this. Among other things they advise using unusual lighting and eye-catching composition, capturing behavior, and learning and using whatever is special about your subject. They advise incorporating weather into the your pictures and capturing the moods of animals, even at the risk of anthropomorphizing them. This book is all about composition.

It's all good advice, but I have to confess, other than so clearly articulating the premise, there's nothing that hasn't appeared in other books on wildlife photography. Like the documentary pictures described by the authors, nothing separates this book from the crowd. I certainly had more fun reading Moose Peterson's "Guide to Wildlife Photography: Conventional and Digital Techniques" where his discussion of making pictures "pop" was similar to the Illg's ideas. I wondered if this book was meant primarily as a showcase for the authors' photographs. And while these pictures are attractive and interesting, I'm not sure that they all reached the level to which the authors aspire.

There is no discussion of technique in this book, except to the extent that it impacts upon composition. That's not necessarily bad, but it means that the book is limited in what it discusses. Experienced wildlife photographers who are looking to take their work to the next level may find something here to think about. People new to wildlife photography will be better served by a book like the late Bill Silliker, Jr.'s "The Master Guide for Wildlife Photographers".