I don’t often call myself a wildlife photographer. Of course there’s wildlife all around when I’m outdoors. I love identifying the birds I see and trying to learn the birdcalls. I enjoy the few times I notice the white-tail deer before they notice me and start bounding away. I’ve appreciated the blas\u00e9 indifference of all the bears I’ve run into while hiking. And I get really excited when I see a pine marten, otter, or mink—which is infrequent enough!<\/p>\n
I think the main reason I’ve never considered myself a wildlife photographer is the gear. It sounds ridiculous now that I say it, but it feels like it’s hard to compete with photographers who have the multi-thousand dollar lenses and who take regular month-long trips to famous wildlife destinations. It can seem like wildlife photography is a hobby for the wealthy (although I don’t mean to dismiss the extremely hard working and definitely not-rich wildlife photographers out there—I know you exist too).<\/p>\n
Yet somehow over the years I’ve managed to take quite a few pictures of animals. Some of them I even like quite a lot. It’s rewarding to think that I can rely on thoughtful composition and patience to get beautiful photos instead of relying on expensive gear. If I was outdoors purely for the wildlife photos I’m sure I’d be disappointed, but because I thoroughly enjoy the whole experience, I find that the wildlife experiences I do have are that much more special.<\/p>\n
The photo above is a baby bighorn sheep in Kananaskis.
\n270mm, f5.6, 1\/800 of a second<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don’t often call myself a wildlife photographer. Of course there’s wildlife all around when I’m outdoors. I love identifying the birds I see and trying to learn the birdcalls. I enjoy the few times I notice the white-tail deer before they notice me and start bounding away. I’ve appreciated the blas\u00e9 indifference of all […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87,736],"tags":[2845,267,2852,2856,838,2855,2848,2846,74,2844,269,2857,1780,2853,2847,2854,669,2851,2849,349,2850],"class_list":["post-2675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-photo-of-the-day","category-wildlife-2","tag-baby-bighorn-sheep","tag-bears","tag-beautiful-photos","tag-birdcalls","tag-birds","tag-expensive-gear","tag-extremely-hard-working","tag-famous-wildlife-destinations","tag-hiking","tag-multithousand-dollar-lenses","tag-outdoors","tag-patience","tag-pictures","tag-pine-marten","tag-regular-monthlong-trips","tag-thoughtful-composition","tag-whitetail-deer","tag-wildlife-experiences","tag-wildlife-photographers","tag-wildlife-photography","tag-wildlife-photos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2675"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2679,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2675\/revisions\/2679"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2675"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2675"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/joelkoop.com\/updates\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2675"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}