#1 Keep The Sun Behind You.
This reduces lens flare and prevents the camera’s light meter from being fooled by direct sunlight. With the sun behind you, enough light reaches the subject to showcase a wide variety of color
without washing out features such as skin tones.
#2 Dealing With Midday Light
Midday sun is the worst possible setting for
trophy photographs. One of the simplest solutions to fixing high-contrast scenes is to lighten the shadows with your camera’s flash. Many digital cameras have a Fill Flash or Flash On feature that exposes the background first, then adds just enough flash to illuminate your subject. Remember: Most digital camera flashes only have a range of about 10 feet, so don’t stand too far away from the subject.
#3 Warm Up Those Tones
The white balance on most digital cameras is
usually set to auto by default, which is fine for most snapshots, but tends to cause a cool
clammy feel to some photos. To avoid this pitfall, try this simple test. Take a few outdoor shots with the white balance on auto, then take the same picture again with the setting on cloudy. This adjustment is like putting a mild warming filter on your camera. It increases the reds and yellows resulting in richer, warmer pictures.
#4 The Bigger The Better
If you paid a premium for a 6 megapixel camera, then get your money’s worth and shoot at 6 megapixels. If you take a beautiful photo at a low 640x480 resolution, that means you can only make a print the size of a box of ammo. On the other hand, if you recorded the image at 2272x1704 (4 megapixels) or larger, you can make a lovely 8x10 photo-quality print suitable for framing or even gracing the cover of Grand Slam or Ovis. The point is, if you have enough memory, there’s no reason to shoot at lower resolution and risk missing the opportunity to show off your
trophy in a big way.
#5 Practice Makes Perfect
A few days before your next hunt, take some extra time to read your camera’s manual and get outside to practice every feature you can think of. Your camera may have a landscape mode that brings clarity to a panorama of outdoor sights, but you have to know how to enable this feature. Perhaps your digital camera has a portrait mode to enhance the subject and blur the background.
If so, grab a couple of friends and take a few practice shots in the back yard. You can always delete practice photos before your hunt. But while you are away and a photo opportunity arises, its hard to take full advantage of camera features you aren’t familiar with.
