Improve your wildlife photography – expert advice

Want to improve your wildlife photography? First, choose a subject that's close to home. Not only does this allow you to get a better understanding of how a specific animal behaves, it also improves your chances of being in the right place at the right time – especially when the light is at its best.

Wildlife photographer and Canon Ambassador Dani Connor has taken the idea one step further – moving her home close to her subject.

Swapping England for Sweden has allowed her to spend countless hours focusing on the subject she is renowned for: red squirrels. Her photographs and videos of this charismatic species have found an enthusiastic and engaged audience online, and have helped her sustain a rewarding professional career.

When it comes to wildlife photography, persistence is key – even when you're dealing with subjects that you've been working with for years and know intimately. "I usually have to wait an hour or more for one of the squirrels to get into the perfect position," Dani says. "If I've got a setup where I want the squirrel running up a branch, often they'll just run down it. Sometimes they'll sit in front of you and show you their back the whole time. You can't spook them or do anything to move them – you just have to be patient and wait."

Here, Dani shares her favourite techniques for successful wildlife photography, including tips on composition, lighting, and camera settings to use.

Isolating animals can be a challenge when you're taking pictures in visually busy environments such as woodland. It may be hard to find an uncluttered backdrop where there are no distracting tree branches or bright patches of light in the canopy that draw your viewer's eye.

The narrow field of view captured by a super-telephoto lens can help, as can selecting a wide aperture to separate a subject from the background. Even without an ultra-fast lens, careful positioning to ensure there's some distance between the subject and the background can still provide a strong degree of separation.

“It's harder when squirrels are on the ground, because the scene becomes messier," Dani says. "With a subject where you're providing food, you have a bit more control over where they're going to be." Encouraging them higher up onto a branch can be a really useful way to clean up the background, Dani adds.

"I have one spot where there's a dead tree," she says. "There are loads of overlapping branches, and I have positioned small cups on the other side of them so I know exactly where the squirrels will go. If I'm using the RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM lens, I know I can easily shoot at f/7.1 at this spot and still have good isolation."

Creative use of lighting can help pick out a subject, Dani adds: “for example, try to have the subject in the light and frame it against a background in shade."

Backlighting is another technique that can highlight an animal in an evocative way. It's ideal for furred and feathered subjects, where their soft outline catches the light and glows.

When the natural lighting isn’t right, another creative approach is positioning a remote flashgun to add a splash of backlight. Dani has been experimenting with a Canon Speedlite EL-5 that she's been triggering wirelessly via a Speedlite Transmitter ST-E3-RT (Ver.3) mounted on her camera.

She uses the Manual flash setting, at a relatively low power – typically 1/64 – and diffuses it to blend it more naturally with the ambient light. Squirrels are generally tolerant of flash, but it should be used respectfully.

One of the challenges of photographing wildlife is that animals tend to be active either early in the morning or at dusk, which can mean working at the edge of light, in the cool blue hours before sunrise and after sunset. This is less a technical challenge, and more a creative opportunity – and a time to capture moody blue shots, Dani says.

To get sharp shots at this time of day, "you may need to increase the ISO or use a slightly slower shutter speed," she explains.

An EOS R System camera equipped with In-Body Image Stabilisation (IBIS), paired with an RF lens that has optical IS, can make for a very stable image when you're shooting handheld. But you still may need to choose a higher ISO sensitivity to achieve a fast shutter speed that will freeze subject movement.

Dani also suggests changing the white balance to a setting that accentuates rather than corrects the cool blue tones at this time of day. "If I'm shooting in daylight, I'll just leave the white balance set to Auto (Ambience Priority), but if I want to emphasise colours during the blue hour or golden hour, I will manually set the white balance using the Kelvin (K) colour temperature option."

Choose a low value (such as 2,500K) if you want to increase the coolness of daylight, or a high value (such as 10,000K) to warm things up. (The contrast between warm and cool lighting is evident in the last two images above.) If you shoot RAW files, then you're free to refine the colour temperature when you process your shots – but setting it manually in-camera gives you an accurate preview while you shoot.

One of the benefits of moving from a DSLR to an EOS R System mirrorless camera is the Live View display in the electronic viewfinder, which previews the image with your white balance, exposure and other settings applied. "Unless you're doing something very creative, such as experimenting with slow shutter speeds, you don't need to take test shots any more," Dani says. "You can immediately see what your photo is going to look like."

Dani has a lot of photos in mind and keeps a notebook of creative ideas she sketches out. "Sometimes I'll revisit the same idea again and again until I'm happy, but other times I'll wait for very particular conditions.

"When I know it's going to be very cold or it's going to be a clear sunrise, I will go and try to photograph in the blue hour or try to do something specific. Maybe it's extreme cold that I need – when it's around -30°C, the squirrels' whiskers are frozen."

In tough conditions like this, Dani relies on her Canon mirrorless cameras to deliver. On recent shoots she has used Canon EOS R5 series bodies and the EOS R6 Mark III with the Canon RF 400mm F2.8L IS USM, RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM and RF 135mm F1.8L IS USM lenses – and Dani describes the last of these as her "dream lens" that is "amazing in low-light conditions."

A wide-angle lens is useful to show an animal in its environment – as long as you can get close enough to ensure the subject is large enough in the frame.

"The RF 24mm F1.4L VCM is a favourite of mine," Dani says. "There's one squirrel, Buddy, who I've known for five years, so he's relatively comfortable with me and it means I can get close to shoot wide-angles, which is fun.

"Sometimes, I'll put my camera up on a tripod and then use the Canon Camera Connect app on my phone to trigger the shutter – so I can see what's going on using the live preview."

Setting up a camera trap using a motion sensor is another way to get close-up shots with a wide-angle lens, Dani suggests. "The motion sensor will trigger the camera to take a photo as soon as the squirrels move in front of it. So, I will set up a really nice wide-angle shot using a stump or a log, put some food out, manually preset the focus, then leave – and just hope that they will pose in a nice position."

The ability to take pictures silently when you use a mirrorless camera's electronic shutter is a huge benefit for wildlife photography, especially when working at close proximity in the stillness of dawn and dusk.

"I always use the silent shutter," Dani says, "and the highest continuous shooting speed," so as not to miss critical moments. "Servo AF is really important too. I want the camera to be constantly tracking an animal's eye."

Dani sets Animals as the subject to detect and enables Eye Detection in her camera’s AF menu. "In the past, when shooting with a DSLR, I might have used manual focus if I was going to be in a very 'busy' environment and shooting through a lot of foliage," she explains, "but these days I don't struggle with that – and I don't find the camera will suddenly focus on a leaf."

When she wants full control over where her camera is focusing, she will switch to Single-point AF. "I've always got a custom button to return to the centre point," she says. "Sometimes wildlife photography is so chaotic that I just need to immediately reset the focus."

Dani also takes advantage of the extensive customisation options on her camera for when she's recording her YouTube videos. "I have the M-Fn button set to toggle between photo and video, so I can switch between them very easily.” She find this control easier to use while shooting than the photo/video switch on top of the camera.

"Often I will want to take a photo and a video clip of the same setup, so this allows me to do that without having to take the camera away from my eye. I prefer that over just immediately pressing the record button because I can still adjust the settings within the camera."



By combining an understanding of animal behaviour, camera settings and light, Dani is able to turn her everyday encounters into memorable and evocative wildlife photographs. Mastering these techniques takes time but, with practice, it becomes possible to anticipate moments and use available light creatively to capture distinctive scenes in nature.

Watch Dani Connor’s “Wild Light” video tutorial on Canon Club.