How Dani Connor creates striking backlit wildlife images

Backlighting can be one of the trickiest things to handle in wildlife photography. Point your camera towards a bright sunrise and it is all too easy to end up with a blown-out background or a silhouette with no detail.

For wildlife photographer and Canon Ambassador Dani Connor, though, that challenge is part of the appeal. Used well, backlight can transform a wildlife image by bringing out the texture of fur, emphasising a dramatic shape, and creating a different mood.

Want to try it yourself? Here are Dani’s tips for getting the key things right: timing, subject placement, and exposure.

For Dani, the best backlit wildlife images often begin early. The "blue hour" can result in a cool, moody look, while sunrise and the "golden hour" bring the warmth needed for silhouettes and rim light. The lower the sun, the easier it is to position it neatly behind the subject.

That matters because backlighting works best when the light wraps around the edges of the animal. With red squirrels, it can catch the fur and ear tufts beautifully, creating a glowing outline that helps separate the animal from the background.

“I compose with the sun directly behind the animal, but I’m also thinking about the background and distracting elements,” Dani says. She aims for a background clean enough for the shape of the animal to stand out, free of twigs and branches, other objects, or bright patches.

Getting the animal on a raised perch creates more space between it and the background, which makes the rim light more visible and stops the image from becoming cluttered.

Pose matters too. “When I’m photographing the squirrels backlit, the images I’m happiest with are the ones where the tail is up,” Dani says. “You get that really charismatic shape.”

Rather than relying on exposure compensation, Dani uses manual exposure, and her priority is to protect the highlights, because once brighter areas are blown out, you can't recover them later.

“I’m exposing for the highlights, and I don’t mind if darker areas fall into shadow. To me, it’s more distracting to have whites with no information,” she says.

In practice, this means shooting wide open to let in as much light as possible, keeping ISO low where she can, and adjusting shutter speed to suit the brightness of the background and the movement of the animal. With a fast-moving subject like a squirrel, she still needs a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the moment, but her exposure decisions are led by the light around the subject rather than by trying to brighten the whole frame evenly.

This approach is also what allows her to decide whether the image should lean more towards a full silhouette or retain a touch of detail in the animal itself.

Backlit wildlife scenes can be demanding for autofocus, especially when the light is low. Dani says her EOS R6 Mark III's subject tracking and Animal Eye AF make this much easier.

“The autofocus is so good it can pick up the eye even when it’s almost dark,” she says, “and the tracking is incredible.”

The live preview in the electronic viewfinder is another major help, giving a much clearer sense of how the exposure is working before the shot is taken. Add in silent shooting and fast continuous burst rates, and the camera is equipped to catch the most fleeting moments.

But Dani does not leave everything to automation. “If I know the squirrel is going to sit somewhere, I’ll pre-focus there first,” she says. Like the exposure, the technology is there to support the shot, not to replace the photographer’s judgement.

Natural sunrise or sunset light may be ideal, but Dani also uses off-camera flash to create a backlit effect when the conditions aren’t playing ball.

Her setup is simple. She places a remote flash behind the squirrel to create a ring of light around the body, diffuses and softens it using kitchen tissue, and the flash is triggered wirelessly. She'll also use the Canon Camera Connect app to control her camera remotely when she wants to work from a wider angle without disturbing the subject.

Dani keeps the flash power low and uses it carefully, making sure not to distress the animal. For her, the goal is not to overpower the scene, but to recreate the kind of subtle edge light that feels natural and adds atmosphere.

What makes Dani’s backlighting technique so effective is that it pushes beyond the standard wildlife portrait. By thinking carefully about where the light is, where the subject is placed, and what should be held in the highlights, she turns ordinary encounters into images with much more mood and drama.

If you're looking to elevate your photography, give it a try. Backlighting is not just a lighting condition to cope with – put it to use and make your wildlife photos really stand out.

Written by Jeff Meyer