Animal Photoshoot - Sarah Weintraub

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 Photo 1 - Dark Side of the Pond: Shutterspeed - 1/160, ISO - 3200, f/5.6


Photo 2 - Meeting a Friend: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 3200, f/5.6

Photo 3 - Coming Home: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 400, f/8


Photo 4 - Rising by Sunset: Shutterspeed - 1/200, ISO - 400, f/8


The most prominent issue I faced while trying to take these photos was being able to take a picture where the animal was clearly the subject of the image while being in focus. The next time I go out to take pictures with wild animals as the subject, I will definitely rent a zoom lens from ATUS. I’ve taken a lot of pictures of birds from a distance over the past few weeks, but they are either too far away with nothing else interesting in the background, or they aren’t the primary focus of the image. The photos I chose were when I had the best opportunities to get as close as possible to Mallard’s specifically, but unfortunately even those ones don’t have the Mallard’s as the primary focus. I still like the photos I chose, but next time I would be more patient and intentional about focusing the lens on the animal so it’s clearly the subject.  Another issue I faced was lighting, especially when taking pictures of birds up in trees, the stark contrast between the sky and the trees makes the shadows really intense so it’s hard to see anything in the images. The images are also kind of grainy because I had it set to auto ISO, and when the sun starts to set it automatically goes to max ISO possible. 


Over the weekend I went home, so I put out food in my backyard to attract birds or squirrels and the next morning there was a group of birds, but unfortunately they were scared away very quickly (it didn’t help that my dog barks at everything). I waited outside for a while, but the pictures I took weren’t ideal, primarily because the backlighting was very strong so the trees and birds turned into black silhouettes.



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