When photographing any wild animal there are always variables that you'll have to deal with, and quickly; a twinkle in the eye of an Eagle is something special to catch in your camera.  Try and Black-chinned Hummingbird, female, Wind River Canyon, Wyoming - 1st Place 2014 Cody Art ShowBlack-chinned Hummingbird, Wind River Canyon, Wyoming-Winner of 1st Place Award 2014 Cody Art Show! keep the wildlife in sharp focus; this itself is most critical, as an out-of-focus Hummingbird is just that....out of focus.  How you do this is up to you and the equipment you're using.  The "experts" will tell you to use a "back button focus" and a disabling of that action in the shutter button.  My hands are old and in pain, so this activity is too painful, plus I prefer the speed you get from using the shutter button; I cut my digital teeth on Hummingbird photography and love the speed that my Canon 7D does it's thing, and wildlife seldom sit still in the Wind River Canyon for long.  

     My advice has been and always will be this, "Shoot and react to wildlife as quickly as possible, you may never ever get a second chance."  You and your camera need to be not just ready, but ready for just that microsecond when that wild animal tilts it's head just so....and that picture you saw in your head is now in the camera's memory chip.  Those moments in nature are scarce in the twenty-first century, and many people end up photographing "wild animals" in the zoo.  So take your favorite camera, and get to know it's operation like you know how your own hand works; then get outside and take some pictures of something. 

     Take photographs of anything that interests your own eyes and mind.  If that flower is blooming in the park, grab your tripod and go get it; get out of that chair and go chase down that colorful bird or that deer you've seen.  Then do it again, and again till practice makes perfect, as Nana would've said.  I've studied art and photography for over half a century! and I learn something new so often it's frightening.  Creative people are happier and live longer than those duds on the sofa, so my advice is get up, practice and enjoy nature, and let her energize your own life the way John Muir wrote so often of; with all of today's crazy pressures of life, a breath of Mother Nature's bounty would do you a world of good.  

     I learned my fast reactions from old men that shot wild animals with big noisy guns; trust me, shooting animals with a camera is a lot harder than killing deer at three hundred yards.  You have to get to know the animal and how to approach it: For instance....can this animal eat me?  Can it poke out my eye or put me in the hospital?  This is the reason that wildlife photographers use long lenses, but you still must be able to move closer than the hunter.  Go slow and move slower still, take your time with that Chickadee and you will be rewarded with a photo that even your kids will cherish.  Wildlife photography is a balance between getting a photograph everyone will love, and not antagonizing that Buffalo enough that you end up like the guy in that Yellowstone video.

     As a child I heard the adage, "The real magic happens in the darkroom.", and it still does.  A quality digital photograph is your quest, but without a good understanding of computers and this software crap, all you'll have is a snapshot.  It took me years to get even a small amount of confidence with Adobe products (they keep changing), but what it really is all about is confidence in your own vision; what do you want your picture to look like?  Look on the internet and see what others are doing, then do what YOU want.  Remember this....it's your photograph of that mountain or that rabbit, not theirs.  Your art is your own expression of self----stand tall!

     I read an argument recently, in a major publication, that asked the famous photographer Art Wolfe if all of this wildlife photography is just a form of nostalgia----"that it's all going to be over very soon...."  This idea is so sad that it frightens me for the generations yet to come; I don't want my Hummingbird photographs to be all that's left of them.  If even one child that reads my blogs or sees my website goes on to help save the wilderness, then all of this is worth the effort, period.  Because if we cannot protect the Wild Places, and the animals that have always lived there, what are we doing here anyway, but destroying things that are not ours to destroy?  

     This week's photograph is a Wyoming Chipmunk doing gymnastics for his breakfast, shot this very morning in between coldish sips of chocolate laced coffee.  I'd been planning and shooting these acrobatic gymnasts for some time, and this is my best effort so far.  And for those of you that were curious, I shoot around twenty thousand digital pictures a year on average, and I hate all of them.  Canon 7D @ ISO 400, f/5 @ 1/250 with my much loved Canon 70-200mm f/4L IS lens.

Chipmunk - Wind River Canyon, WyomingWyoming Chipmunk doing gymnastics for his breakfast.

      Now get out of the house, and learn what it is to have Nature renew your faith in your world.

All writing and photography by Michael John Balog ---- HogbatsPhotography.com 

P.S. The Wild Turkeys are here almost every day; the Golden Eagle pair just showed up high in the cliffs, and the deer are down for mating season; soon the Bald Eagles will arrive to antagonize me for another winter.