All,

To me the pictures from your hunt are one of the most important if not the most important trophies you take home. That said to me it is of the utmost importance to take the best pictures I can. This is for my gratification, respect of the animal, and to put my best foot forward when shown to other hunters and non hunters. I came across a few good pointers today. A buddy told me he always carries babby wipes and dental floss????? Really? Affraid the lion has zebra in his teeth? It was actually quite ingenious. He uses the babby wipes to wipe up blood for the photo and the dental floss to tie the tongue in place or tie the mouth closed. Brilliant!!! I though this would be a good starting point for some experience recommendations for trophy photos. Let's hear your advice!

Brett

quote:

Originally posted by Brett Adam respect Let's hear your advice!

Don't use a stick to prop-up the animals head.

Keep the pics close up with out a bunch of ground between camera and subject.

Most "snapshots" are taken to far away with no thought at all to composing a nice photo.

And definately clean up the blood.

I always carry wipes anyway-- great way to clean up after gutting. But the dental floss is genius!!! Definitely going in my fanny pack!

Unless there's a naked model standing behind you, use a low f# and put the focus on you and the animal, let the background blur out a bit. Also, most people get waayy to much background and try to combine a hunter/animal shot and landscape...cant be done very well by the average joe.

If you use digital, get as high a mp camera (recommend SLR only)as you can. Why? when you want to get the thing made into a real picture it wont look like a cartoon. I know even the small teeny cameras look good on a computer screen but thats irrelevant to making good prints on paper. I have a bunch of kick-ass pics of GErmany (back in the day when i was camera dumb) and they look like crap even at 4x6 inches. If you have ever worked with 4x5 cameras, almost everything else looks like crap in comparison.

try to keep the light behind or off a shoulder

Learn how to use the fill-flash and get those annoying shadows off yer face in the case you are using a very light background, such as sunset or sunrise or sky which will mess with your metering. **TIP** if the fill flash is overwhelming, step back a few feet and use zoom to re-frame and take another pic. By stepping back and reframing you can vary the mount of flash to hit your subject and really balance your subject against the background.

Keep in mind metering really means averaging most of the time the average is the wrong exposure for a good pic.

LEarn about white balance

Dont lean yer gun with the muzzle pointed toward the camera..see this way too much...

Dont stretch your arms out ala chuck adams....sure it impresses your non0hunitng fiends that the elands head is as big as your whole body but everyone else knows better.

change your prespective, get way low to the groud and see what that looks like.

If you use a Canon, leave it on P and try to take as many pics with natural light versus flash. Also, My Canons (both dig and film) tend to overexpose when more than half the frame is light, so I compensate the exposure by -1/2 to -2/3 a stop. You will also find that this helps bring the colors and contrast out a little better. Also, step up the vivid setting on the canon digi cameras.

If you know how to use a polarizer you can really get vivid pics, but if you dont you'll screw all the pics up

**Later** If you really want good black and whites, go get yerself an old Canon or Pentax (i get mine for well under 100 bucks for the body, **match your lens brand) and get a handful of Tmax 100. It looks so vastly superior than a converted pic you cant believe it. You can even get real sepia prints from Bob Mullins at Moonphoto, where I get all my stuff done. Good stuff there...


practice practice practice...and have fun

Wipes always

Dental floss very good

You may or may not want to carry a set of $10 taxidermy eyes (great if you have to use flash) so animal doesn't have green eyes that shine - if not, sometimes putting dust on eyes works

Usually also use toilet paper or paper towels to stuff in throat and in nasal passages to stop blood coming out/flow

Always clear grass and brush in front of animal (if you use auto focus often a stem or two of grass will be in focus and animal and hunter will not - flash will often blow out on brown or tan grass)

Take way too many photos in 2-3 different positions to make sure you get a few really good photos

Take your time

If the photographer will lie on ground - it usually looks better (nothing worse than a guy looking up at the camera, and it makes animal look way smaller)

I have done a few but I don't like photos when the hunter is sitting waaaaay behind an animal. Pretty obvious what is going on

Turn horns or antlers different directions to see which angle is best - also on antlers, try to find an angle that shows every tine/point (sometimes this is impossible

If you can get the head up off the ground, it helps - even better if horns/antlers are skylined (doesn't work with big animals like buff, eland, kudu, etc.) Don't have a bunch of cluttered brush behind horns and antlers if at all possible.

Try not to have shadow on hunter's face with cap or hat brim. Fill flash helps here and taking photos in morning and afternoon help- you want hunter to face the sun. This can be a pain, but it helps immensely.

Always try to be respectful of animal - don't sit on it, straddle it, etc.

I am sure I can come up with a few more down the road...I know these few things by screwing up plenty of photos!

Cut the tongue off as far back as possible if it is a problem. Cram toilet paper or some other absorbent material way up the nose to prevent it from dripping blood. (Thank you Tim Herald). If there is much blood to clean up which there could be with a lung shot the water the guys carry will probably work much better than Baby Wipes and you won't have anyhing to additional to carry. Do as suggested make the pix close ups. Nobody cares about the ground or sky around the animals. Clear all the graasand brush in front of the trophy and clean the aniamls coats of grass, dust etc. Take more shots of each animal than you think you need. You can always delete the ones you don't need but you can't take more once the animal is cut up and in the vehicle. Get the people in the pix to take off their hats or at least tip them way back. Great trophy pix that don't show the hunters face are bad. Be aware of where the sun is and howit effects you snapshots.

Mark

As an aside, one of the things I find most frustrating when actually being the subject of a pic is that the person you hand your camera to has no clue what all of the techinal stuff means and just lifts the camera and hits the button with their shoulders shrugged as to whether it will come out or not. If you have a small tripod, you can then setup the shot yourself and do the work if you know how to versus trying to explain to the person what you want them to do. It may take longer to get the pics like you want but if you have a stand in for you while you compose you can do it quicker than explaining what to do to someone else.

I try to get a picture with both knees on the ground or sitting on my rear end without my legs showing. I also like to make sure I can see all the points an animal has if it is a deer or elk. If you pose with a straight on look sometimes you don't get the best look at the head gear.


Here is a bad picture with knees up. It takes away from the picture

knees down lets you get a closer shot as you are not so high


I also like to fill the frame up with the animal and myself. I do not need or like to have the full animal in the picture as this makes it look too far away when you fit it all in.

I find on steep sloped angles it is better to stay on the downhill side of the animal and be creative in the pose

I also like pictures without the hunter in them that may show off the scenery or something cool.


I am not a pro at photos but i take a pile of them with all of my animals and usually get a few that look good. Try all the different poses you can get and mix it up and something will look good.

For me it`s about the place and lightning. If you start to wipe the blood of with paper you always get it smeared out and if you take water you will get half the anmial looking wet. It just easier to take a minut in Photoshop or similar program and fix it.

Try to hold the horns up and hold the camera low.

It`s also fun to have close ups on paws/fur/claws etc

Below are a few good ones, you have probably seen them before.

Don't take the picture towards the sun as well. The lighting is washed out like this


Here is a better example with the sun behind the photographer


Use a camera with a good flash. Some cameras are weak in the flash department. You can see the differences with some of the trail camera pictures guys have at night and some are washed out or the flash range is weak.
Here the whole animal and the person behind it shows well and the colors come out great.

I thought the cheap camera I had here would have picked out these cape buffalo but they didn't show well.

Bad flash on this one as well. Quite a difference compared to the Kudu pic

That's some fine work. What kind of camera did you use?

:: :: ::

A.Dahlgren , fantastic pictures. They are crisp and clear and I love the pictures of parts of the animals especially the Leopard. Great job!!!

Myself I use a couple cameras that are not what I consider special. One is a Sony s40 4.1 megapixel which you can buy on e-bay for $50.
The one I did take a few pictures with that has a good flash and crisp looking pictures is my video camera. It is a Sony camcorder with a digital camera built in. Flash is strong and it is 6 megapixels. It is nice because I can get some video while out and it snaps some great pictures.
I would like to buy a new pocket digital camera before I go on my trip to Zim and I am open to suggestions for any that you guys would recomend.

The canon s95 is good and has short shutter lag, the g10/11/12 are good. they have the same basic guts. i would determine budget first

Nube,

that top pic is a good example of where meters fail. The camera was trying to average the very bright snow and the darkness of your kids' (i presume) clothes an it had a hard time doing it. On that pic, compensating a full stop (or more) down should have made that very useable. It is also an example if my 'more than half' rule with my Canons. Not sure what kind of camera you have but suggest farting around with exposure compensation (being in Alberta, i guess you shoot a lot with snow around) and I bet more of the bright snow shots will look a bit better.

god luck

As a PH taking good trophy photos is an important segment of our business. Most pointers have already been addressed. My advise is do not worry too much about high resolution but more the composition.

Mr Dahlgren is an artist and a master of photography, and he well illustrates the importance of taking many pictures from different angles. The photo of his trophy elephant is one of the best I have seen.

I have included a classic trophy photo which was taken under difficult circumstances and using a timer. Many photos were taken and eventually I had to lift the head of the Sitatunga in order to get it right. This is the advantage of the digital replay. My advise is take many images from different angles and make sure that the hunter is happy with the images.

quote:

My advise is do not worry too much about high resolution but more the composition.

I'll agree that composition is the #1 thing but high resolution is important if you ever intend on making prints and most importantly if you crop the photo in any way. Once you start cropping a photo you will start to lose resolution as you have essentially zoomed in and to maintain 300dpi for example for your prints can be a challenge.

Another thing to think of is whether or not you may submit the pics to a magazine. Just look through even the best outdoor magazines and you can pick out the pics taken with teeny sensors and low MP. In comparison, Mr. Dahlgreens's great pics from his Canon 5d MKII will be much appreciated by the publishing staff.

Another perspective is this... the trip you are about to embark on may be the last you ever take, you have spent maybe 10's of thousands of dollars on the hunt itself, maybe a few grand on your rifle and many many hours of preparation for the trip. Why on Earth would you skimp on the very thing you will use to document your trip? You can get a hell of a camera for a grand; it will be well worth it. Best advice; buy it used and then if you dont like it, sell it after the trip. That way you don;t take the initial hit. I have only bought one new camera in my life and it will be my last.

Good Shooting (both kind!)

BAXTER I am sending you a PM. I have a few questions for you

BaxterB,

Quite right, however most camera's on the market today are of high resolution. My point was that the overall image is paramount. Impressionism.

An example and this picture was taken in a hurry and later cropped. It does say 'piss off or I will eat you' in whatever resolution you like.