USA news on Youtube Dec 5 2018

heading off on another Safari and today I want to share some wildlife

photography tips

so let's talk about wildlife photography I really want to share some wildlife

photography tips with you today and I should start by saying that I am NOT a

professional wildlife photographer at the start of this year I was a complete

beginner if you've been part of this community for a while either on this

channel or on Instagram then you might remember back in April when I went to

Eswatini if you don't remember that because you're new to the channel then I

will put a link up here so you can go see those videos and make sure you hit

the subscribe button just below this video if you want to see more travel

more photography more wildlife more cool stuff like that when I went to Eswatini

that was the first time I ever went on Safari that was my first ever Safari and

my first real shot at doing wildlife photography and I even bought this Sigma

lens for my Canon 5D iii for that trip I had no idea that I would actually be using this

lens so much the rest of this year because I've now been on Safari about 40

or 50 more times since I arrived in Africa in October so yeah I was a

complete beginner at the start of this year but I've also had a lot of

opportunity to practice my wildlife photography here in Africa and I feel

like I've learned a lot so I want to share those tips with you today and if

you're just getting started or even if you've done a fair bit of wildlife

photography yourself I hope they're gonna help you take better photos

whether you're on Safari or whether you're just taking photos of

the creatures in your back garden

my first tip for wildlife photography is similar to lots of photography and that

is to get up early except in wildlife photography you want to get up as early

as you possibly can when you're staying in national parks like these ones in

southern Africa then you're going to be restricted by the gate times the gates

usually open about thirty minutes before sunrise so if you can get out there on

the top you're gonna have a much better chance of seeing some cool animal action

you're gonna have a much better chance of seeing animals close to the road to

seeing them getting up to all sorts of mischief and that's because most animals

are nocturnal animals are most active during the night but unfortunately it's

always kind of hard to see them at night whether it's because you have to be back

in the gate at that time or whether it's just because you need so much gear to do

night photography it makes it kind of hard so normally you can go out on

game drives in the morning or in the evening but I've found the morning tends

to be best just because the animals are still active from the night before if

it's a hot day they might not get active till long after sunset so get up early

get out in the morning it'll be worth it we were getting up at 4 a.m. every

single day in Kruger and honestly it wasn't even a struggle wildlife

photography is just so much fun and so rewarding when you're out at that time

and you actually get to see stuff that it is totally worth it

tip number two is get ready to delete a lot of your photos you want a big SD

card that can take a lot of photos when you go out and do wildlife photography

because a lot of the time you're just sort of burst shooting hoping that you

get a shot and the reality is you're gonna take more photos than you normally

would but you're probably also gonna delete about 98% of them and it's a long

painful process which is actually why after Namibia i sat down with Brendan

and we went through each other's photos you can see that video here if you want

to see what came out of that and yeah I just find that such a painful part of

the process I now kind of try and focus more on specific shots but if you only

have a short time and you're not able to photograph animals as much you

might want to just make the most of it take loads of photos and then you're

going to delete most of them unfortunately

tip number three and I think this has been the most useful thing for me in

learning about wildlife photography and it has nothing to do with photography

that is to learn some animal behavior most animals most wild animals are very

predictable they have a set of behaviors and they respond to certain situations

in different ways and they have say maybe five to ten behaviors that they

display constantly and if you can learn those behaviors so you can predict what

they're going to do you can be prepared for that shot and you can get the photos

if you know the elephants flap their ears when they're hot then you can go

out when it's hot in the middle of the day and you can wait you can get a shot

of the elephant with this massive ears out like this if you know that leopards

drag their kill ah pertree you might be able to get a shot of a leopard dragging

an Impala up a tree and even if you miss that shot like I did you may be able to

get a shot of the leopard coming back down the tree which I did and that was

probably my favorite photo from this whole trip learn some animal behavior

and it's going to be so much easier to get cool photos animals always look

better when they're doing something when they are in action and they are the

hardest photos to get so if you have an idea of what an animal is about to do

you've got a much better chance

leading on from that and on a similar note my next tip is to be safe and

respect the animals yes it's great to take photos of animals it's great to

photograph wildlife but you have to remember that these are wild animals and

you are in their territory and you just don't want to disturb them or do

anything that's going to make them uncomfortable because what's the point

of being able to share nature if you're also sort of damaging it and disrupting

it so first of all make sure you know some animal behavior so that you can

stay safe especially with animals like elephants and hippos that can be pretty

dangerous if you don't know the signs that they give off and second of all

make sure you're not harming the animals or scaring the animals in any way I've

seen people who want to get a photo start clapping or making noises to get

the animals to move that's gonna scare the animals you don't want to scare the

animals so yeah just be a good person don't be mean and yeah just be really

respectful of nature and that also kind of leads me on to the fact that you're

gonna need to be patient there's kind of two parts to wildlife photography

especially on safari the first part is finding the animal and that can take

hours that could take days that could take weeks if you're looking for a rare

animal that's really hard to come by but even if you find that animal there's no

guarantee that you're gonna get a good shot it might be in bad light it might

be in the shade it might be doing something really boring you just don't

know what the animal is going to be doing there might not be any kind of

cool position or frame that you can get so

you might need to wait with that animal for a while and again knowing animal

behavior can help with this but you have to be patient a lot of times on safari

if you come across something cool or an animal that looks like it might get up a

move or hunt then you can sit with it for maybe an hour or two waiting for

that moment and when you get that shot it's gonna be so so worth it but you do

have to be patient and have the camera ready and yeah don't expect things to

just happen and there to be action all the time while locator if he takes a lot

of patience and it's a lot of potluck as well and that also brings me on to my

next point which is to have your camera ready if you're in your own vehicle you

might want to have a bean bag on the side so that you can leave your camera

kind of resting there and not hurt your arms whether you have that or not you

want to make sure you know your camera really well I shoot most of my wildlife

photography on AV mode but I also shoot a lot of the time on manual wildlife

photography is the one time that I shoot on manual mode just because I want to

make sure everything's right and sometimes I've just found like

especially when it's hot the camera has a hard time picking the right settings

and I can do a better job myself so it's the one time I shoot on manual you don't

need to shoot a menu I also shoot wildlife photography on AV mode a lot of

the time but knowing your camera and knowing how to quickly change between

what you might need to change between how to quickly do those basic things and

do it under pressure without looking at the camera is going to help you so much

when you're in the moment and there's action going on and you don't want to

miss that shot

another camera tip for wildlife photography a lot of beginner wildlife

photographers will zoom in as far as they can on the animals and a lot of the

time you do need to zoom your lens as much as you can this one only goes up to

400 so I do spend most of my time with it zoomed right in but you want to make

sure you don't seem too much actually what you don't want to do is crop off an

animal's fur or part of their tail so that you Colin is the image it's always

better to kind of zoom out just a little bit especially if they're moving around

and you don't know exactly where they're going to go and then you can just zoom

in on the animal when you're editing the photo so wildlife photography is also

the one time where I don't worry about being super zoomed in or having the

perfect frame because it's kind of out of your control and that will say brings

me on to the next point which is composition is hard you're gonna have to

work with what you've got with wildlife photography and that is one of the big

challenges of wildlife photography sometimes an animal is just in a

beautiful frame and the composition is incredible the lights amazing and you

get that great shot without really having to think about it and that's bull

assume most of the time however when you come across an animal they're gonna be

kind of in an awkward position you might not be able to see the whole animal and

you're gonna have to get creative so if you're driving if you're on a self-drive

Safari it's a lot easier to move the car to an angle or position you need try and

think about different angles and what you can do to make that a photo rather

than just a quick snapshot of an animal so you might want to use stuff in the

foreground there might be some grass or some bush that you can blow out just to

create a frame around the animal it might be that you even just zoom in on

part of the animal I found this is especially true for elephants they're

just so big and they're just not photogenic but if you can zoom in on

just a crop of their face especially the behaviors that I can look pretty cool

so yeah you're gonna have to work a bit harder to get a good composition with

wildlife photography but it also means you can get kind of creative and that

does bring me uncie my final tip which is to try and get at the animals I set

for and I appreciate that this is kind of almost impossible sometimes this

again it's just pot luck but if you can get the animal eye level it's just gonna

tell a much greater story is gonna have more emotion to the photo one of the

hottest animals to photograph is a giraffe because they're just all the way

up here and they just always look the same by if you get your off coming down

to drink water or eat a tree and you get an eye level it makes such a difference

so try and gets the animals in of all I appreciate that's really hard if you're

in a safari vehicle if you're in a car if again it's just kind of potluck

waiting for the right moment and trying to plan ahead as much as you can if

you're doing a different sort of wildlife photography and you have a hide

with something it's probably gonna be easier but yeah always try and get at

the animals eye level or maybe even just below and that is it for my wildlife

photography tips I wanted to share some sort of wildlife tips for everyone

whether you're a beginner whether you're a bit more advanced I think I've learned

a lot this year I've learned a lot on this trip as well and we still have

plenty of Safari to come here on the channel as always thank you for watching

if you enjoyed this video don't forget to give it a little thumbs up leave a

comment if you have any tips of your own that you'd like to share or if you found

any of these tips useful I'd love to know what you thought of them I post new

videos on this channel every Wednesday and every Sunday there's always travel

photography and yeah behind the scenes of my life of food home travel so if

that sounds good and you're not subscribed already make sure you hit

subscribe the next video will be up in a few days time and I hope

For more infomation >> WILDLIFE PHOTOGRAPHY For BEGINNERS - Tips & Tricks - Duration: 12:44.

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Corporate Tax Breaks Starve Schools Of BILLIONS Of Dollars - Duration: 3:57.

According to a new report by Reuters tax breaks for major corporations from cities and states

have starved schools of one point $8,000,000,000 in just the last year, one point $8,000,000,000

that could have gone to a struggling school systems.

It could have gone to giving teachers a much needed raise.

It could have hired in some areas, depending on the level of tax breaks they gave.

Corporations could have hired 28,000 new teachers just in some cities, but instead we gave that

money to multibillion dollar corporations just to entice them to bring their headquarters,

bring their new offices, bring their manufacturing to those specific areas.

We are starving school districts have money to give more subsidies, more tax breaks, and

more gifts to the top.

One percent education in the United States has been on a steady downward slide for decades

now.

School districts mostly thanks to Republican budget cuts have been slashed, denied funding

that they desperately need.

Using textbooks that are 10 to 20 years old and falling apart, not able to keep up with

technology in the classroom, having instead to rely on outside grants, charitable groups

or celebrities coming in to raise money for particular schools because that money is not

coming from the government as it should be.

The city government, the state government, we're having to go elsewhere to find it and

now we know where that money's actually going.

According to Reuters, they're massive report here.

It's going to corporations, these same corporations that are already pulling in billions of dollars

in profits every single year and this is pretty much what happened recently with Amazon and

as I pointed out at the time, all corporations do this.

They, they play cities and states against each other.

Try to get the best deal, get the most tax breaks, get the most subsidies and incentives

and then they pick a winner and then that city ends up losing money because they're

giving so much away to that corporation because typically they don't just create 10 to 20,000

new jobs in that area.

Yes, they do create new jobs in that area, but a lot of them, a lot of those 10 to 20,000

jobs or however many it is, they promise they actually just bring in workers from other

states, you know, people from their other branches come in and now they work there,

so the unemployment rate in those areas doesn't actually drop.

In fact, depending on what kind of corporation comes in there, if it's a Walmart or other

kinds of big box store, the unemployment rate can actually increase as does the number of

people needing public assistance, but rather than give this money to these massive corporations,

we could be giving it to schools.

We could be helping the next generation get a better head start in life and instead we

want to give it to people who already have billions of dollars sitting in the bank because

we think it might look good in a campaign one day.

That's what this is about.

That's why politicians love to brag about corporations moving into their areas saying,

look what we did.

We rolled out the red carpet for Intel, or Amazon, or Microsoft, or Boeing.

When in reality, they gave away everything that that city had to offer starving students,

starving teachers, increasing the need for public assistance and actually cutting funding

for that as well because we got to give more money to that corporation.

It looks great on the campaign trail, but when you look at it on paper, which is what

Reuters did here, it's an absolute disaster for cities and states.