Learning wildlife photography – Seeing with both eyes

Posted on 02. Mar, 2009 by Paul Burwell in Everything, Techniques, Wildlife photography

Learning wildlife photography – Seeing with both eyes - One of the great disappointments in wildlife photography comes about when we miss, or fail to anticipate some behaviour or action.  And instead of ending up with a great behaviour image, we’re left with an image of half an animal or, worse yet, an empty frame.  What can you do to help ready yourself for the action?

My technique, and it is one that takes constant vigalence to maintain, is to keep both eyes opens while I photograph.  Make no mistake about it, I keep my right eye jammed firmly against the camera’s eyepiece to help me compose, adjust focus-points, and keep an eye on technical factors like the shutter speed.  But my other eye, my left eye in my case, is wide open taking in the rest of the scene through my peripheral vision.  This way, I’m much more likely to spot action opportunities and be ready for them if and when they occur.

I have a tough time remembering to keep both eyes open and I’ll often find myself concentrating so much on the image in the viewfinder that I’ll lapse into the photographer’s wink with one eye closed and the other open.  It only takes missing that one shot to firmly remind me of the folly of this lazyness.

I’ve talked to several people about this technique and some people seem to have a real difficulty seeing through their camera and around their camera simultaneously.  Practice is certainly going to pay off here.  Much like learning good long-lens technique or learning how to quickly manipulate your camera’s focus points, practicing seeing with both eyes will pay off with some more dynamic images.

Here’s a couple of examples where keeping both eyes open really paid off for me.  In this first shot, I’d been focussed in on the front wolf working on portrait shots.  My other eye caught the wolf’s companion moving into a fortunate position up and behind.  This allowed me to zoom out and include both wolves in the image creating one of favourite wolf images of a wolf and his shadow.

Grey wolf and a shadow watch intently through the falling snow - CA

In this next image, I was intently focussed on the little blonde coloured Black Bear cub walking through the grass and was working on images of it.  Its siblings had scampered well up a tree following a grunt by the sow.  Because I had both eyes open, I was able to see that the pair of cubs were descending the tree and I was able to zoom out to make an interesting image of the three of them together.

Black Bear cubs walking and descending from a tree

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Tags: both eyes, focus, learn, learning, peripheral, Photography, seeing, technique, viewfinder, vision, Wildlife