Animal photography is a favorite job for a lot of photographers, both amateur and professional. Whether it be a family dog, cat, hamster or tiny insects, brightly feathered birds or wild animals such as monkeys or elephants, they are always perfect subjects for the photographers who love them very much.
We commonly take animals as moving subjects since they can run or move whenever we approach, they just don’t stay where they are for all day and night, they might even attempt to bite you when you get real close.
However animals do move and bring photographers challenges from random motion. Bees, butterflies, insects, wind or gentle breezes, they are able to make the animals move, as a result, motion in the animals is enough to create blurry images.
And the lighting is another big challenge for the animal photographer because of surface angles vary. Most of the animals in the world have fur and many of them go with green leaves lying around, so the light may reflect among petals, stems and leaves and each of the elements can perform as a small reflector.
This often results in a few of the image look dark and a few being so bright. If the light differences are just too great you can add more light to even out the exposure, then you can work this out with flash or reflectors.
Another way to solve the lighting difference problem is to come at a different time of day when the sun stays at a different angle from the animal. Morning, midday, and afternoon or at night all have different properties of color as well as light intensity and angle so it is worth visiting your chosen animal subject throughout the day to select the proper lighting.