Lighting

Good lighting is absolutely necessary for good photography. By good lighting I don't mean the intensity of it, but it's the quality of lighting. And the fact is that the worst quality lights are the flash lights that come with standard cameras. So my first advice about choice of lighting for not only nature photography, but any photography is not to use flash lights. I always prefer to make use of the natural lights irrespective of the lighting conditions. However there are some obvious problems with photography in low light conditions. If the natural lighting is low one may need to use large aperture or exposure time in order to capture enough light for the photograph. Another problem with low intensity of lighting is noise. The photograph tends to get noisy in low light conditions. There may be couple of solutions to this problem: i. Decrease the ISO speed, but this may require increase in exposure time or aperture size. ii. Use Adobe Photoshop to remove the noise (this is not an elegant solution, but works very well). When it comes to long exposure time, the use of a tripod or stand is indispensable. However I generally try to find a good spot to place the camera rather than carrying along a stand with me! If the exposure time is more than 1/20 of a second, holding the camera in hand while photographing is not recommended.