Why I Photograph Wildlife — and How to Start
From a Nikon D3000 with a broken auto mode to four hours with a red-backed shrike at Vârful Mateiaș — why the waiting is the point, and a beginner's route into wildlife photography.
People usually ask about the gear first. I began with a Nikon D3000 and the kit 18-55mm lens — whose auto mode, on mine, never worked properly, so I had to learn manual mode out of necessity. Looking back, that was the best thing that could have happened to me: I understood exposure before I ever had good equipment.
The pull toward animals was there long before the camera. As a child I lived among them — my aunt kept goats and I went out herding with her, around dogs, chickens, cats and sheep. But it was the camera that took me out of the house and into wild nature for the first time.
Why I photograph wildlife
When I finally put a telephoto on my camera — a small Panasonic 45-200mm — I was deeply moved by how close it brought me to animals I used to only see from far away: a bird, a lizard, something that had always run or flown before I could reach it. That frustration of never getting close enough, and then suddenly being able to, is what hooked me. I had stepped into a world I had never been in.
The turning point came at the top of Vârful Mateiaș, close to my parents' house. I had gone out simply to be in nature, in my favourite spot, and brought my camera of the time — a Panasonic G80 with the 45-200mm. A small bird kept returning to the same dog-rose branch. The conditions, I later understood, were perfect: last light of the evening, shooting at the bird's level, a clean background — though I didn't know any of that back then. I didn't even know what species it was; I had to search online when I got home. It was a red-backed shrike.
I stayed four hours, completely fascinated by how closely I could watch that small wild being. That meeting is what started all of this.
It also teaches you to look properly. Once you start reading posture, light and behaviour in order to take a photograph, you cannot switch it off again. A reedbed stops being scenery and becomes a place with residents.
And it has a point beyond the picture. Photographs made without disturbing an animal are the ones worth sharing: they show the animal doing what it would have done anyway. The swan in my gallery sat through two hours of waiting before one display — nothing about that time was wasted.
What it gives me
Freedom. Time in nature. The chance to spend a morning inside the habitat of wild, pure beings, in beautiful light. I live in Bucharest and work an office job, and that makes it matter even more: the camera is the reason I leave the city, and the reason I keep discovering new natural places.
When I'm out with the camera in hand, I enter a flow — time stops counting and everything feels right. And then there is the quiet satisfaction of getting home in the evening and going through the photographs.
How to start in wildlife photography
You do not need professional gear to begin. Everything above happened on a Nikon D3000 with a kit lens and on small Micro Four Thirds bodies — long before the OM-1 Mark II I use now. The limitation that mattered was never resolution — it was how close I could get and how patient I was willing to be.
1. Start with one local place
Pick a park, a lake or a stretch of river you can reach easily, and go back to it. I use ShadowMap to see where the light will fall across a spot before I even leave the house. Knowing where the light lands at seven in the morning and which bird uses which perch beats travelling to somewhere spectacular you don't understand.
2. Start with forgiving subjects
Waterbirds, ducks and swans are large, slow and used to people. They let you practise exposure, focus and composition without the frustration of a subject that leaves before you've raised the camera.
3. Learn three settings, not thirty
Shutter speed of 1/2000 sec or faster for anything moving, aperture wide open, and ISO allowed to rise to a ceiling you accept — mine is 10,000. Add continuous autofocus with subject detection on the eye and you have covered most of what matters.
Your first camera will have limits — continuous focus that misses more than it should, noisy files at high ISO. That's fine. Experiment, pay attention to what works and what doesn't, and with practice you'll know exactly what your camera can and cannot do. So practice, practice, practice.
4. Let the animal come to you
Sit down, keep still and wait. Animals settle around a quiet, unmoving shape far faster than they tolerate one walking toward them. Near a city, earthy clothing is usually enough; in genuinely wild areas a hide or natural cover is a must.
5. Accept that most frames fail
A morning that produces one good photograph is a good morning. The others taught you where to stand next time. If a session ends with the animal still calm and feeding, it was not a wasted one.
Where to go next
Questions about the photos, the settings or the gear?
Write to me below — I read every message and reply when I'm back from the field. You can also email me directly at nick.usor.peter@gmail.com.
Wild By Nick — Field Notes. Photographs and words by Nick Ungureanu.