Part 2

Part 2 of the book is about the essential skills needed for nature photography. Exposure is one of them. A histogram comes in very handy while checking the exposure of a picture. It shows you where the lightest and darkest points of the picture are and then you will find out how to adjust your exposure to fit the right amount of lighting. Figuring out the right amount of exposure takes practice and is perfect with time and needs to become a quick habit because with nature photography you usually only have one chance at that perfect picture. There are many ways on many different camera to adjust exposure such as adjusting shutter speed and aperture. Cameras love to turn really dark or light spots in a picture to 15% gray. Therefore setting the right amount of exposure is important.
Reading the light is another essential skill. There are many ways light can effect a picture. There is front light when you shoot a picture with the sun behind you. This is best for a contrast in colors and shadows of a scene. Sidelight is when the light is coming through the side of your picture. Sidelight is amazing to use for landscape pictures to portray the shadows and depth of the whole scene your shooting. Back light is when the sun is directly behind the subject you are shooting. This makes a very nice outlining of the subject if shot right. If anything stay out of midday light especially if there are not clouds around. This lighting is very over exposed and doesn't make for very great pictures.Clouds make pictures great. Overcast days are great, or twilight, and of course sun sets and rises.
Depth of field is also important. Your point of focus determines how you are going to take the picture. Sharpness is usually preferred but you can set up what part of the picture you may want to look blurry. Such as a picture of an animals face being very sharp and then the back ground and branches being blurred. This is where the artistic part of photography comes in. Everyone sees things differently and likes different looks of the same scene.
Motion is a major point of photography. Shutter speed comes into play here. Shooting birds and running animals is hard to do. Of course you will want to pan with them as they move because this helps make the picture even more clear. For a humming bird shutter speed should be adjusted to 1/3000 of a second, and a waterfall should be around 1/250 of a second. Some photographers love to blur the motion of running zebras or flying birds and others love to get it as sharp as possible. So for each preference you need to know what settings to be on.
There are a couple rules that are important. The rules of dominance are one thing; red is more attractive than yellow, large draws more attention the small, difference is better than conformity, jagged lines are more striking than curved, diagonal lines are more attractive than vertical, sharpness is more attractive than blur and light is more attractive than dark. The rule of thirds is also important. Using objects in the third of the picture is the most attractive.