Exotic Animal Photography in a Studio Setting

Photography Tips  •  Studio Photography

Wildlife photography is not reserved just for the great outdoors. Bringing the exotic animals into the studio can bring a new element to the form of portraiture. In a two minute look into Brad Wilson‘s life as a professional photographer, you can get a feel for what it’s like to be enclosed into a room with the potentially fierce animals during a photo session. You’ll see below that, while the animals can be intimidating at times, the experience is also quite moving:

Photographing the animals in a studio environment presents a few difficulties; however, the finished product makes the extra effort worthwhile. As Brad Wilson explained in the video, you get a much closer proximity to the animal than if you were on safari.

“They’re not trained in the sense that a dog is trained where you can say sit and they’ll sit. They’re basically trained to come out on set and not attack you. Beyond that they’re really going to do whatever they want to do. It’s up to you as a photographer to try to find a moment in all that organized chaos. You can’t continually mess with lighting or have people running in out of the scene.You really have to just let the animal do what they do and hopefully you’ll find that moment.”