When it comes to wildlife in my own backyard, I’m very lucky to live very to forests and parks. A variety of animals visit me on a daily basis but I had a bit of spare time only last week to try to photograph them.
Blue Jay (Cyanocitta cristata)
I took my biggest zoom lens (70-200mm), set the camera to continuous autofocus and made sure that my shutter speed was as fast as possible to avoid blur in long zoom (all these are pretty much the most principles when shooting wildlife or anything that moves when using big zoom lenses).
Eastern Gray Squirrel (Sciurus carolinensis)
I laid on the ground and waited. To my luck (I’m a very impatient person), it didn’t take long for the first visitor to arrive. I tried not to move when taking picture so I would scare them off. After about 20 minutes, the animals didn’t think I was a threat and they started to get closer to me.
Eastern Cottontail (Sylvilagus floridanus)
I have to admit that 70-200mm is not a lens I would recommend for wildlife shooting because even at it’s biggest zoom, it doesn’t bring a subject close enough. Fortunately, my camera (Nikon D610) has an excellent image quality and I was able to crop these images very tight.
