Wildlife Photography Online Portfolio Website

Wildlife Photography Online Portfolio Website

If you have an interest in wildlife photography, having a professional website and portfolio is essential. We’ll guide you through the steps to creating the perfect online portfolio website to showcase your stunning wildlife photography.

When you initially hear about wildlife photography, it’s easy enough to fall into the trap of thinking it’s all big adventures and deep dives into nature, but if you’ve attempted to start building your wildlife photography website, there’s a good chance you understand just how much time and effort go into putting together this essential component of your business.

Whether you’re just getting started in wildlife photography, or you’ve been at it for some time now and you’re finally ready to put up your wildlife photography website, today we’re going to give you all the details on starting a wildlife photography business with a professional website and well-organized portfolio website.

Intrigued? Follow along and we’ll get your website up and running in no time.

How To Get Started in Wildlife Photography

Before we start building a website that shows off your skills and attracts clients, we need to make sure a few key components of your wildlife photography business have been addressed.

While almost all photography niches require specific skills and qualifications in order to thrive in the field, wildlife photography is particularly sensitive to unique skills and qualifications, so before going any further with your website, let’s make sure we’re all on the same page about what is required of a wildlife photographer.

  1. Understand your subject – Photographing wildlife requires you to understand the behavior of your subject, especially when you’re taking photos of unpredictable wildlife and animals. The way you photograph a snake in the wild versus a bird in the tree can be very different. Make sure you understand how you can capture them from afar and without disturbing their environment.
  2. Learn more about their environment – Depending on your subject matter, you’ll need to do research and understand how to capture them in their natural habitat. If you’re taking images of the wildlife in the forest, you’ll need to map out the area. If you’re taking underwater images, you will also need to understand how to shoot properly because of waves, the weather, and other elements that could affect your shot.
  3. Have the right equipment – Make sure you have the right equipment to capture your subject. Whether you’re capturing them underwater or on land, you will need to get the right lenses and protective gear to ensure your camera doesn’t get damaged. When capturing wildlife, it’s important to get a high-quality wildlife lens that can are able to capture sharp images, focus fast, and have a large focal length.
  4. Be patient and attentive – Animals are unpredictable. Wildlife tends to move around and hide in dark, hidden areas. You may need to find a spot and stay there for a long period of time, as you could alert the wildlife and cause them to hide. Be patient and stay attentive to their every moment so you can capture them as soon as they come out of hiding.
  5. Capture and curate your best shots – Take photographs whenever you have the opportunity to capture wildlife. Create a gallery of all the wildlife you have captured. If you travel to other countries, take the opportunity to capture some of the wildlife there to build your portfolio.
  6. Create a website – Once you’ve acquired enough images and experience, create an online portfolio website for your wildlife photography. Showcase your work and the different wildlife you’ve captured and start marketing your business with it.

How To Make a Wildlife Portfolio

Creating a wildlife portfolio takes lots of time, effort, and consideration. Here are our top tips for creating a wildlife photography portfolio:

  1. Be specific with your topic. In order to succeed as a wildlife photographer, we highly recommend narrowing your focus and style. Do you want to document exotic animals abroad? Or do you prefer to stay close to home? In any case, define your style and preferred subject matter.
  2. Personalize your portfolio. Not all branding involves choosing colors and fonts. It’s about emotion and style. While choosing images is an important part of building your portfolio, you should also consider branding once you’ve narrowed down your subject matter. Do you prefer bright, bold, exotic shots? Maybe you’re a marine biologist. In any case, knowing your brand can help you put together a portfolio that matches the images.
  3. Selective photography. No matter what type of photography niche you’re in, we always advise being selective with your images. That is, only show off the best. Remember that your portfolio is often the first impression of your work. Quality over quantity is the way to make a good first impression.
  4. Add captions. The use of text or captions in a photography portfolio isn’t always necessary, but in wildlife photography, it can help tell a story. This is a great strategy if you’ve been traveling or seeking adventure for your wildlife shots. You can even include corresponding blog posts in your portfolio to really get to the image’s heart.
  5. Remain organized and clear. No matter what style of photography you specialize in, having a clean and professional portfolio is always a good idea. Unrelated images and information are one of the easiest ways to turn off a visitor. Visitors should be able to identify you as a wildlife photographer with a distinct style. If you work with other styles or subjects, adding tabs and categorizing your work is one of the best ways to organize your wildlife photography website

Wildlife Portfolio Templates: Which One To Use?

For visual learners out there, we know how beneficial seeing a portfolio in action can be when making decisions about your own portfolio.

While you will want to have your own flair and branding present when designing your website, if you’re struggling with putting together your wildlife photography portfolio, here are some of our top website templates to showcase your wildlife photography:

Sun

Easy-to-navigate, clear, and organized, you won’t have any difficulty finding what you’re looking for on this website. If something simple and straightforward feels right for you, take inspiration from this portfolio example.

Industry

A full-screen look at all your wildlife photography. Industry’s unique design features a vertical scrolling gallery to view each image in full-screen. It’s clean, simple, and puts your best work in the spotlight.

Chroma

Make it easy to browse through your photography with a slideshow website template. The classic design allows viewers to toggle between thumbnails for an overview and scroll through to see each image in detail.

Wildlife Photography Portfolio FAQs

Wildlife photography can be extremely rewarding. If you don’t understand the field, it might just seem like you’re taking images of animals, but beyond that, wildlife animal photography is crucial to science. Wildlife photographers document animals in their natural habitats, providing necessary education for anyone interested in nature, both personally and professionally (i.e. environmental scientists). 

Whether or not wildlife photography is a good career is a personal question that will vary from photographer to photographer. In other words, whether or not you find wildlife photography professionally stimulating and fulfilling will likely be dependent on how suited you are for the craft. 

You should include approximately 15-30 images in your portfolio. When putting your portfolio together, you want to showcase your best work. Curate the best photos that allow visitors to see your style and photography skills. For your wildlife photography portfolio, you may want to showcase close-ups, wide shots, and different types of wildlife or environment you’ve shot in.

While a photography degree is not required, it may be worth considering getting a two or four year photography degree to learn the basics and understand the ropes of photography. If you’re interested in animals and wildlife, a study in zoology may also be beneficial, so you can have a better understanding of the wildlife you’ll be encountering.

Being knowledgeable about outdoor photography is a must. You will likely be shooting in natural lighting situations and will need to deal with different weather conditions and times of day, depending on when and where you’re shooting. Being able to adjust for this in terms of aperture and shutter speed is crucial as a wildlife photographer. Other good skills to have include patience and an ability to adapt your expectations based on unpredictable environments.

While not absolutely necessary, a wildlife photographer is likely going to require some outdoor “survival skills.” While you don’t have to necessarily go full backcountry camping, off-the-grid survival mode, a basic understanding of how to track wildlife will likely help you, as well as an understanding of how to safely navigate outdoor conditions and terrain (i.e. proper footwear for hiking, being prepared with food/water, knowing how to take shelter, etc). 

Most of what you’ll need to learn in order to become a skilled wildlife photographer will come with time, experience, and getting out in the field.

Unlike other photography niches, a wildlife photographer’s skills and qualifications are not necessarily transferable. For example, if you have experience shooting family portraits, you can easily transition to wedding photography.

But with wildlife photography, we’re dealing with a completely different subject matter. Get out there and shoot wildlife to get a feel for what this entails. Start small and see if this is a field that suits you and your skills.

Build a Wildlife Photography Portfolio With Format

We understand that when considering how to start a career in wildlife photography and creating wildlife photography websites, there’s a lot to consider, which is why we’ve done our best to simplify the process with our wildlife photography website templates.

Fully customizable and with plenty of options to choose from, with Format you can have your website up and running in no time.

Try us out free and see what Format can do for your budding photography career.

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