Landscape photographer tries his hand at photographing wildlife in Namibia

 

 

If you follow photographer Thomas Heaton, then you know he's been in Namibia to photograph landscapes and wildlife. He's shared his first full video from the trip and this one is focused on wildlife photography. It's not often we see him doing wildlife photography, but what better place to have a go at it than in Africa?

On the first full day in Namibia, Heaton headed to an orphaned cheetah rehabilitation area. While not wildlife in the strictest sense of the word, some of the young cheetahs will someday be returned to the wild and have a second chance at a normal life. After checking out the young cheetahs, Heaton headed out into the full-blown Namibian wild to try to find wild cheetahs to photograph. While landscape photography can be very exciting in its own right, there is something special about widllife photography, especially when it works out well.

Heaton opted to use his Canon 5D Mark IV with a Canon 200-400mm lens. The lens has a built-in 1.4x teleconverter, so it's effectively a 200-600mm f/4-5.6 lens. He used spot metering and aperture priority with an ISO ranging from 250 or so to around 800. "Not quite the same as landscape photography," he says. Follow along with Thomas Heaton in the video below.

While certainly a positive experience, Heaton laments that the wildlife experience was not quite truly wild on his first full day in Namibia. He will be heading further into the country and photographing animals in a truly wild habitat. Stay tuned to see more of Heaton's journey.

(Via Thomas Heaton)