What is wildlife photography?
Wildlife photography shows wild animals in their natural habitats. It needs patience, knowledge of animal behavior and often long lenses, because good wildlife pictures are made without disturbing the animals. Many wildlife photographers also work for conservation, using their pictures to show threats to species and places.
Main approaches
Animal portraits. Close, personal pictures of a single animal. Andy Rouse is known for portraits of tigers in Ranthambhore and of little owls in the English countryside.
Behavior and story. Long projects that follow animals over years. Beverly Joubert has photographed lions and leopards in Botswana and Kenya for more than 40 years. Frans Lanting made long stories for National Geographic in the Okavango Delta, Madagascar and Antarctica.
Camera traps. Cameras triggered by the animal itself. Steve Winter used them to photograph snow leopards in Ladakh and the cougar P-22 below the Hollywood sign.
Underwater and polar. Paul Nicklen photographs leopard seals, polar bears and narwhals above and under the ice.
Conservation stories. Pictures of people and animals together, for example by Ami Vitale, who photographed Sudan, the last male northern white rhino.
Birds. A large field of its own, with very long lenses and fast autofocus to follow birds in flight.
by Andy Rouse
History
Early cameras were too slow for living animals, so many 19th-century “wildlife” pictures show captive or dead animals. The British brothers Richard and Cherry Kearton changed this. In 1895 they published the first natural history book illustrated entirely with photographs taken in the wild, and in 1898 With Nature and a Camera, with 160 photographs. They used hides to get close, including a hollow model of an ox (1900) and a stuffed sheep.
In the United States, George Shiras III photographed deer and other animals at night with flash and tripwires. National Geographic later called him “the father of wildlife photography” for his early use of camera traps and flash. In Britain, Eric Hosking became one of the best-known bird photographers. In 1937 a tawny owl struck him at a hide and he lost his left eye, which he later described in his autobiography An Eye for a Bird.
Faster film, long telephoto lenses and later digital cameras with fast autofocus made action and behavior much easier to capture. The Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition, run by the Natural History Museum in London, was first held in 1964 with about 600 entries. Today it is one of the best-known photography competitions in the world.
Techniques
Know the animal. Learn where and when it feeds, rests and moves. Most good wildlife pictures are planned, not lucky.
Eye level. Get down to the animal’s eye level. It makes the picture more personal and gives a cleaner background.
Long lenses and fast shutter speeds. Telephoto lenses of 300 to 600mm let you keep a distance. For moving animals, 1/1000 second or faster is common, with continuous autofocus.
Hides and patience. A hide or a vehicle hides your outline, and many animals accept it. Waiting hours for one moment is normal.
How to start
Start with animals near you: birds in a garden or park, ducks on a pond, deer in a local reserve. A zoom lens such as 100-400mm or 150-600mm is a common first wildlife lens. Follow ethical rules: do not bait or chase animals, keep away from nests and dens, and never put an animal under stress for a picture. In competitions, say how a picture was made, including captive animals and baiting.
Books to start with
Eye to Eye: Intimate Encounters with the Animal World by Frans Lanting. Close portraits of animals from Lanting’s travels.
Born to Ice by Paul Nicklen (teNeues). Polar wildlife above and below the ice.
Legacy
Wildlife photography has shaped how people see nature and its loss. Pictures of polar bears, rhinos and rainforests have become symbols of conservation campaigns. The genre has also pushed technology, from early flash and camera traps to modern autofocus that recognizes the eyes of animals and birds.
Discover wildlife photographers · Wildlife photography in the Photopedia Dictionary
Last updated: November 2026
