Jess Lee Article: Beyond the Wildlife Portrait

“Wildlife photographers have two things in common; the love of nature and the desire to improve our images.” This is how Jess Lee starts his article Beyond the Wildlife Portrait, just published in the Nature Photographers Online Magazine. Jess should know - his nature photos have appeared in the publications like National Geographic over past 30 years. He explains how to advance from the simple “static” wildlife portraits into more awe-inspiring photographs by incorporating behavior and the environment of the animals into the images.

This way, you can get closer to the reality of the nature, and sometimes even too close. The result may be really thrilling then. Like the Norbert Reif’s photo “Att. CRUEL: Gull gets duck-chick” mentioned in the article. All I can do here is to agree with one of the comments: “I’ve not seen a more dramatic avian image”.

“Moving beyond the simple ‘wildlife portrait’ is something that not all nature photographers may be interested in doing. But for those who embark on the search for this Holy Grail of wildlife photography, there cannot be a more challenging or potentially rewarding photographic endeavor.” - Jess Lee - (You can view more of Jess Lee work at jessleephotos.com).