The Wild Photographer

Shutter Speeds Necessary for Various Types of Wildlife Movement

• Court Whelan • Episode 81

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There are few things more frustrating in wildlife photography than thinking you nailed the moment… only to later realize the animal is just a little bit soft. That is, you didn't freeze the wildlife movement. 

In this episode of The Wild Photographer, we’re diving into one of the most practical, field-tested topics in wildlife photography: what shutter speeds you actually need to freeze motion.

But here’s the important part: not all movement is created equal. A sleeping polar bear, a restless lion, a nursing cub, a walking raccoon (any raccoon photographers out ther?), a sparring bear, a flying bird, and a twitchy little forest bird all require different thinking. And while faster shutter speeds are usually safer, they come with trade-offs: higher ISO, more noise, wider apertures, less depth of field, or the need to lean on de-noise software later.

We’ll start by separating two types of movement: camera movement and subject movement. Camera shake can sometimes be handled with the classic “one over focal length” rule, image stabilization, tripods, monopods, or good bracing technique. But subject movement? That’s a whole different beast — sometimes literally.

From there, we walk through practical shutter speed ranges for different wildlife scenarios, from resting animals all the way up to fast, frenetic movement like birds in flight, pouncing predators, or fast-twitch action. We also talk about when not to freeze motion, because intentional motion blur can be one of the most creative ways to make your wildlife photography stand out.

The goal here isn’t to memorize a rigid formula. It’s to build a mental field guide so that when the action starts, you can make fast, confident decisions — instead of fumbling with settings while the cheetah, bear cub, or twitchy bird does something spectacular and then immediately pretends nothing happened.

Here’s the summary list of shutter speeds discussed in the episode:

Wildlife Scenarios | Recommended Shutter Speed Range 

Resting animal / no movement | 1/100 to 1/250 sec
Slightly restless animal / periodic movement | 1/200 to 1/320 sec
Restful interaction — nursing cubs, gentle behavior | 1/250 to 1/500 sec
Steadily moving but calm — slow bear, relaxed walking, gentle movement | 1/320 to 1/600 sec
Playful interaction — gorilla baby playing, active family behavior | 1/500 to 1/800 sec
Walking or trotting mammal | 1/800 to 1/1250 sec
Fast movement — sparring, chasing, rolling, running | 1/1600 to 1/2000 sec
Frenetic movement — birds in flight, pouncing, twitchy action | 1/1600 to 1/3200 sec
Extremely fast wings — hummingbirds, insects, wingbeats | 1/4000 to 1/8000 sec may help, but even this may not fully freeze wing motion
Twitchy birds on branches | Can range from 1/250 to 1/1600 sec, depending on timing
Intentional motion blur | Start around 1/40 sec, then experiment slower
Slow-motion blur experiments | Try 1/20, 1/10, 1/8, 1/5, or 1/2 sec
Panning wildlife | Often around 1/40 to 1/20 sec
Handheld landscapes | Absolute slow end around 1/50 sec, but often safer at 1/200 to 1/250 sec
Tripod landscapes | Much slower shutter speeds are possible because the subject usually isn’t moving, and tripods take out all hand movement.


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Court (00:00)
Hey friends, welcome back to The Wild Photographer, We're talking about shutter speeds for freezing motion and wildlife. So basically, what shutter speeds do you need?

To freeze the movement of your subjects. And we're gonna do a dive into all the different shutter speeds that I use, whether it's a resting animal, fast movement, a playful interaction, steady moving but calm movement. There's a lot to think about. Before I get going, I want to turn you on to, if you haven't already checked out my YouTube channel, it's another avenue, it's another channel for me to get more photo information out there to you, my loving audience.

So if you'd like to go check that out, I'll put a link in the description, but you just search Court Whelan on YouTube and you'll find my channel where I do a lot of things like editing tutorials. I might do videos out in the field explaining certain things like how to photograph the blue hour, etc. etc. So yeah, great resource there if you would like to check it out. But without further ado, let's talk about shutter speeds for freezing movement. Okay, so

I do have to step back and say there are two kinds of movement that I want to talk about here. So there is hand movement and there's subject movement.

And these are different. Hand movement would be the minimum shutter speeds to freeze the movement of your hand holding the camera if you're not on a stabilizer, if you're not on a tripod. And then there's subject movement, which doesn't really matter if you're on a tripod, doesn't matter how still your hands are.

If the subject is moving, you could be rock steady, but there's still gonna be movement in your scene. So we're gonna be focusing on the latter, but I do want to start off with a little bit of like the hand movement part because that's a question I get asked often. It's an area that is a little bit confusing to people. So we're gonna talk about first just a little snippet on how to freeze hand movement when you're taking shots, irrespective of what your subject is doing. So this would kind of go into the world of landscape photography.

I will say though that I'm gonna have a little special bonus part at the end to talk about shutter speeds for landscape photography, so we will revisit this. But again, I want to really talk about how to freeze hand movement. So there's this rule in photography called the one over the focal length rule. So just imagine like a division symbol, one over the focal length. And that tells you that the minimum shutter speed you need to freeze your own hand movement is roughly equivalent to one over the focal length of your lens.

So if you're shooting at a 50 millimeter focal length, you really ought to be somewhere around 1/50th of a second. Okay? Now with that, I have to talk about the role of image stabilization. And image stabilization is a wonderful thing. It's not new anymore, but it still kind of feels new. It's it's improving all the time.

And image stabilization works different ways with different camera systems. There's in-body image stabilization where there's actually a little bit of a floating sensor and a floating element that actually records the shot. and then there's image stabilization in the lens itself. And at least I know from the Canon lens lineup, there's almost like a gyroscope in the lens that's actually stabilizing it. So it's pretty ingenious. But remember, these things do not have anything to do with freezing wildlife movement. Wildlife movement

By far and away is always going to be a faster shutter speed than this.

So again, this pertains to really still subjects to begin with. So the thing with image stabilization is you'll often see on lenses and in bodies, they will say, this is a three-stop image stabilization equivalent, you know, in this lens. Let's say it's a 100 millimeter lens and it's a three-stop stabilization. That means that technically you could take the one over the focal length rule and you could go one over 100 for your 100 millimeter lens. You could go one stop slower, so one over 50.

Two stops is another half of that, so one over twenty-five. And then three stops would be like one over twelve, one over thirteen, roughly. So that means that the lens is telling you it's gonna stabilize your own hand movement so much that you can shoot a shot at one over thirteen of a second, one thirteenth, and it's gonna be the equivalent of that one over the focal length rule. Now I have to say I don't totally buy it. I've seen like five and a half stop image stabilization systems in body in camera.

And we're talking about like really big numbers here pretty extreme scenarios where this could work. So I'm not gonna go in super deep depth in this because this is a shorter episode, but I wanna tell you that I really wouldn't ever go slower than one over one half of the focal length with all your big fancy image stabilization in body, in lens, combine the two of them together. So once again, let's use an example. If you're at a 100 millimeter,

and you're at one over a hundred for your minimum one over the focal length rule, this means I still wouldn't shoot slower than one fiftieth of a second to eliminate hand shake, hand movement from the equation.

Okay, so now that we got that bucket out of the way, let's focus the rest of the episode on subject movement, wildlife movement, because that's really what I want to talk about today. I will give you a couple quick caveats. One is that blurred motion can be beautiful. so I'm talking about the range and especially the minimum shutter speed in each different scenario. Like I'm literally gonna list this off, starting with a resting animal to a slightly restless animal, all sorts of stuff like that. But

Just remember that these are to freeze motion. This doesn't mean that you have to freeze motion each and every time, because it can be really, really beautiful if you do get slight blur in certain scenarios. And I'll be sure to call that out when I think about it as I go over these examples today.

So, for most of the talk, I'm gonna give you freezing movement techniques, but I am gonna end with recommendations of how to break those rules and appropriate shutter speeds and some scenarios of when I might actually like to inject some intentional motion blur in my wildlife photography.

Another caveat is that these are quote unquote ideal shutter speeds. We're often forced into slow shutter speeds or slower during low light scenarios.

This doesn't mean that you have to shoot at these shutter speeds in order to have any chance of getting the shot. I can't tell you how many times I want to be at one over 250 of a shutter speed, but I would be at ISO 12,000, 25,000, and I know that my de-noise software just isn't gonna cut it for the quality that I need for that shot. So I might go slower. If I need, quote unquote, need to be at one over two fifty for a certain scenario, I might go to one over one twenty-five, I might go to one over eighty.

But I'm doing that knowing I'm intentionally breaking this kind of rule here. So I have to be extra cognizant of motion in my hand and in my scene. So again, it's a good barometer, it's a good bellwether for where you should be at, but this doesn't mean you have to be at in order to get the shot. There are times when you can break these rules and go a little bit slower and still freeze wildlife movement. And then the final thing before I go into this list is

I really want to talk about the risk. Like what is their risk of having quote unquote too slow of a shutter speed? Well, very simply put, your animal, your wildlife, your subject will just look out of focus. Okay? And so this is the big line in the sand of intentional motion blur

versus a very slight motion blur. If you have just a little bit too slow, your animal is gonna look blurred. And because you're focusing on that animal, everything's gonna be blurred. You know, your background's gonna be blurred because you're telling it to do that. So what you're gonna end up with is kind of a botched shot. So the real risk here is that you will look like you didn't achieve focus. It'll look like the photo is blurred not in a good way, not in an artistic, beautiful way. We'll again we'll get to that in a second.

But let's go over the list. Okay, so I'm gonna start from slowest to fastest, and I'm gonna give you a range of shutter speeds for each of these. And I'm gonna try to give you some examples of what this might look like because you know, the quote unquote resting animal, well, what what does that mean? Well, this means, this is number one, a resting animal is no movement. Like this this thing is sleeping. This polar bear is down for the count. This bird is on the branch, not moving one little bit. This

is somewhat rare for wildlife. I shouldn't say rare. it's just equally common to have some sort of movement. So you don't always get a resting animal.

But you will come across resting animals. So this is really important, is because sometimes resting animals are early in the morning. It's late at night and you want to push that threshold. So ta da, the shutter speed range for a resting animal of really no movement at all

Is 1 over 100 to 1 over 250. And I will say, as I'm getting into this, I realize that I should also clarify that the focal length, I'm trying to be very general here because we could get into if you're shooting, say, on a 600 millimeter lens, these ranges could be a little bit different than if you're shooting at a 100 millimeter lens. But I'm using this as a general wildlife photography guide, and we're all shooting somewhere between, you know.

200 and 400, maybe 500 most of the time. So just know that there is a little bit of room for error, but we're talking about like a fraction, like not a whole lot. These are pretty darn solid. but yeah, just think of typical available wildlife photography lenses out there and the range that you're likely to be at on 95% of wildlife safaris and sightings.

Okay, so I'll repeat the first one because I kind of rattled on there a little bit. Resting animal, no movement.

One over one hundred to one over two fifty. Okay. The next one is what I would call a slightly restless animal. This is periodic movement. It's not completely still all the time. So we're gonna ramp the shutter speed up a little bit so that if there is an ear twitch, if the head is just moving ever so slightly, if it's just looking around, maybe maybe it's a lion in the grass and it's just, you know, it's not sleeping, it is awake, but it's just a little bit restless. I would be at one over two hundred.

To one over three twenty. Okay, so three twenty would be better than two hundred, of course, but 200 is kind of my minimum, and I'm really aiming for one over three twenty. I should also say that faster than this is okay because we're trying to freeze movement. So if you're in the blaring sun and you got plenty of light and you're finding that with all the settings to get good exposure or the right exposure for your vision of the shot, and you're at one over 500.

That doesn't mean you need to drop it down to one over 320. these are just the minimums, okay? The next one is a restful interaction. And so here's where I'm gonna start giving you some examples. This would be like a nursing cub. It might be a bear cub, it might be a lion cub. It's like they're definitely resting and chill, but they're moving around a little bit. Like you you do need to freeze motion. You have movement in your scene. It's just

It's definitely not frenetic, it's not really active, we're not really capturing a certain behavior per se. It's a restful interaction. Okay, so this is one over 250 to 1 over 500. And I should say this is one where I'm definitely trying to bump it up a little bit closer to one over 500 because with any movement in the scene, especially with normal wildlife telephoto lengths, you you need to be extra safe. And gosh, with that example, if you're photographing something as cool as a nursing bear, a nursing lion.

that's something you want to absolutely capture. So, with all these, but especially this one, be on the safe side, maybe a little bit faster than one over 250, but in that range is safe. The next one is what I would call steadily moving, but calmly. Okay, so this might be a polar bear kind of wallowing around in the willows. It's it's kind of restless. It's it's more than periodic movement, like it's steadily moving, but it is calm. It's not jerking, it's not a twitching bird.

It's not a startled deer. I would be at 1 over 320 to 1 over 600. Okay? The next one after that is going to be a playful interaction. This might be a baby gorilla playing with dad. We're steadily going up and we're at one over 500 to 1 over 800 now. Okay, so this is playful, like you're you're really capturing moments. You're gonna be capturing still shots, still images of a sequence of behaviors, okay?

So one over 500 to 1 over 800. And this is where we get into the territory, we're broaching into possibilities for intentional motion blur. I think personally, previous to this, these types of motions like the steady moving, the restful interaction, the slightly restless animal, you don't really want to do intentional motion blur because it's probably not going to be successful. It's not going to come across as intentional. it's going to come across as just really lack of focus. But as soon as we get into legit behavior, so a

playful interaction. This is where maybe a tumbling mountain gorilla, this is where the head swiveling around of dad or the arm extending out to try to grab the baby to bring it closer, this is where you might actually get into that intentional motion blur. And I'm not going to give you those shutter speeds just yet because I have a whole section on that. But to freeze that motion, once again, one over 500 to one over 800.

Okay, next we're ramping it up continuously, we're going to rapid movement.

This would be a mammal walking. I've used the bear example a lot, so we'll switch to a raccoon walking. I don't know if you photograph raccoons, but some sort of mammal that is walking or maybe trotting. We're not looking at a full run. This is kind of casual, not running away from something, not running towards something,

we're looking at steady movement that might be on the verge of fast paced and I think one over eight hundred is really the minimum here but your version your sighting of a walk or a trot could be a little bit different so I would quickly be ready to go up to one over a thousand or one over twelve fifty.

So my range here for steady movement, again, walking or trotting like a jog, would be one over eight hundred or one over twelve fifty. Now let's get into fast movement or like a rapid movement. This is not a jerky motion, but this might be bears rolling around, it might be bears sparring, it could be a chase. This is where we're gonna wanna be at one over sixteen hundred to one over two thousand. We're getting into fast shutter speeds at this point.

This is where we are really trying to freeze just about anything that's coming across our way. But there is another level beyond this, and I'm gonna call it frenetic movement. And there's a fine line, fine difference between fast and frenetic. I mean, what do these things really mean? But frenetic movement would be like that twitching. It would be a flying bird. It would be animals pouncing, like reactionary stuff, like really fast twitch muscle stuff. And again, we're gonna start at one of our 1600, but we might wanna move with this fast

reactive kind of pouncing movement to one over thirty two hundred. Okay, so much, much faster, right? and that's kind of really where I personally top out. I think one over thirty two hundred is about as fast as I'm really ever gonna go. You could go to one over four thousand, but honestly once you get to this range, one over thirty two hundred really should satisfy just about any movement that you're gonna get.

Let's say you might be photographing hummingbirds. Okay, there's a great example where these things are beating

their wings just, you know, dozens, if not hundreds of times a second. bumblebees, I get it. But considering most cameras top out at one eight thousandth of a second, it's probably gonna be somewhat difficult to freeze the perfect wing beat of something that is just absolutely another level of fast. so I'm not telling you to not go to one over 8,000, heck, why not?

Go to one over 4,000. But again, when I'm thinking in my brain with really fast reactions, when these scenes kind of erupt before me, I'm ramping myself up to one over 1600 and one over 3200 if we get really fast movement. Again, pouncing, flying, really fast moving stuff. I want to give you a note on twitchy birds. Okay, I know we have a lot of bird photographers out there. I love photographing birds as well. I would say a twitchy bird is something where

It is landing on a branch or a tree or a bush and it's standing still for a second and it's moving on. It's standing still and it's moving on. So it's it's not that it's continuous fast movement, like I can't really put twitchy birds in these other categories because they change categories from half a second to half a second. So truly you could get away with photographing a bird on a branch that is twitchy at one over 250 and need to go all the way up to one over sixteen hundred.

Because if they are moving at the exact moment you hit the shutter, that 1600 is gonna be very helpful. But if you can time it right, and there is truly a way to time it right, there's a little bit of finesse, I'm gonna give you some some hacks for ways to do this just in a here in a second, is one over 250 in those periods of rest between twitchiness, that could be just enough. And especially when you're thinking of birds under the canopy, maybe at dawn or dusk in lower light, being at one over 250 is going to give you a lot more light, a much lower ISO.

Than wov one over 1600. So don't automatically think that just because an animal has been moving fast and it's resting for a moment, it doesn't mean that you have to be at the fastest possible scenario in order to get it. Sometimes the timing and these other hacks I'm about to tell you about is really the sweet spot. Before I get into those shortcuts and those hacks, I want to talk about intentional motion blur,

So, intentional motion blur, I mentioned, you know, this is when you're you're actively having a very slow shutter speed to showcase the action. And as I get more and more and better and better at photography and have more and more opportunities to experiment, you know, I I've I've got the classic shot that I wanted of frozen motion, but now I can play a little bit. I love intentional motion blur because it is something that differentiates you in your photography.

I hear a lot of questions, I talk a lot about how to differentiate yourself as a photographer, how to get images that look different from everybody else's, but are still very aesthetic and very beautiful. Well, adding in some intentional motion blur from your wildlife subject is a great way to do that. So what shutter speeds are we looking at? we're looking at something less than one fortieth of a second, one over 40, okay?

So, quick caveat here is that you know the shutter speed that you need in order to get that sweet spot of intentional motion blur very much depends on the rate of movement of the animal. So we just mentioned at the end of this list, like the really fast rapid movement or the fast running or chasing or fast twitch muscles. It could be faster than one over 40 for those extreme examples. But really for everything else, like even polar bear sparring, a gorilla dad reaching for his young baby.

We're looking at something probably less than one fortieth of a second. But really, I think it gets even better, more interesting when we get really slow. So I would say start at 1/40 then continue to try in steady increments slower and slower. One over 20, 1 over 10, 1 over 8, 1 over 5, and maybe 1 half a second, 1 over 2. I will say that it might not seem like a big difference when I rattle off these numbers right now between 1 over 10 and 1 over 8, but I can promise you when there's movement in the scene.

There's actually a potentially very big, meaningful aesthetic difference between one one over ten and one over eight. So you want to try all those things. Does this mean that the animal has to be behaving the way it is for longer? Yeah. Does it mean you have to be more focused and more intentional in dialing in your shutter speed and changing settings and moving quick and fast and deliberately? Yeah, it's not easy. I have to admit, it's not an easy thing to do. But once you get the hang of this,

If you can master this technique, it opens an entirely new world of opportunities with your wildlife photography.

One interesting sort of asterisk with all this, with intentional motion blur, is the potential, the ability to pan as your wildlife is moving. Now, in my long photo career and literally millions of photos taken, this hasn't presented itself all the time. It hasn't presented itself all that often, to be honest. This is kind of a rare thing, but to be able to pan in the direction and follow wildlife while it's moving at a slow shutter speed can be one of the most beautiful.

Differentiating photos that you're gonna get out there. So, what this involves is seeing an animal moving kind of in a line, you know, it needs to be in a predictable movement, and then you are going to be following it with your lens, meaning you're tracking it and you're keeping that animal, that bird, that deer, that whatever it might be, in the same part of the frame as you hit your shutter with a slow shutter speed. Again, one over 40, 1 over 20. And so, what this does is if you get really good at this and it takes practice.

But if you keep that animal in the same part of your frame such that it doesn't increase in size, you know, the animal's not coming towards you, it's not going away from you, you're not zooming in, of course, while you're doing this, but you keep it relatively, I think it's easiest to be in the middle of your frame, crop and compose later, and you follow it while you're moving. That moment that the shutter is open, you know, one twentieth of a second is a decent bit of time to go from point A to point B as you angle your lens from left to right.

is you're gonna get this really beautiful streaky background of the vegetation, of the tree, of whatever it might be, with the animal actually in decent focus. And because there's so much motion in the background and so much blur and streaking, even a little bit of blur in the animal itself can be okay. It'll be fine because by comparison, your animal is relatively sharp to this wildly blurred, streaky background. So panning is something that is really kind of like

the the ultimate level of intentional motion blur panning with wildlife, but I'm thinking of things like safari photography where you do have animals like cheetah running on the savannah, where you might have

wild dogs chasing after an impala and you might be able to find them doing this point A to point B left to right or right to left such that you intuitively know now that you've heard this, I'm gonna throw my camera on one over forty, one over twenty, and I'm gonna follow it with my lens. I'm gonna pan as I'm holding the shutter down, so I'm not holding my lens still, I'm I'm literally moving my camera as the shutters being pushed.

And voila, maybe one of the shots of the trip.

Okay, so now let's talk about hacks to push the limits on all these sort of things. Like how can

I get maybe slower shutter speeds than I even referred to here? How can I minimize that risk of the animal looking out of focus? Well, I've got a list here,

So the first one is about higher ISOs and being willing and able to denoise in your editing software. This usually involves shooting with raw

Format. So the reason for this is that as I give these ranges, like let's say the playful interaction that I referred to, the baby gorilla playing with dad, when I give you the range of one over 500, 500 is really the absolute slowest, but 800 could be really, really good, and you might find that really the shot is better at 800. How do you get to 800 from 500? Well, in dimly lit rainforest, cloud and forest conditions, sometimes it's gonna really take a hit on ISO.

But being able and willing to get to those higher ISOs, maybe you have to put your ISO on auto like I do. Maybe you have to deliberately increase it from 1600 to 3200. But being ready to denoise in your post-processing software with shooting in Raw format. So de-noise software has come such a long way in the last few years and it continues to get better. Every version of Lightroom, Photoshop, Camera RAW, Topaz that's out there that continues to come out, the denoise gets better and better. So essentially the photo.

looks less and less fake. in early renditions of this, it had a bit of a sort of a soft look to it. It would unsharpen and then resharpen. It didn't look all that good. But higher ISO and being ready to denoise your photos of fast action and fast moving wildlife is a sure bet that with each of these ranges you can go ahead and be at that upper range as well.

The next one is simply make the subject smaller in your scene. So if you are forced to because you don't want to go to a higher ISO or it's just so dim and dark outside that you can't help but be at the lowest number or maybe even lowest in each of these ranges, simply putting the subject smaller in your scene is a really great way to do so. So this means that A, you're gonna be using a wider field of view, so you're gonna be using less focal length. So in other words, if you were to usually shoot your wildlife shots on a 300 millimeter.

Think about going out to 70, 80 millimeters. By being smaller in the frame, it's gonna have less.

emphasis in the shot and therefore if it is slightly out of focus it's not all about the animal it's not all about the wildlife. It's an environmental portrait. It's a photo of the landscape with wildlife in it. In addition, because you have a wider angle, it's gonna be less susceptible to that general movement that I was talking about before.

So making your subject smaller in the scene may not be your first plan. It may not be exactly what you want. Your vision for the photo is a big filling the frame wildlife shot. But again, if you're forced into pushing the limits, that's a great hack is just zoom out and put the subject as a smaller part of your scene.

The next one, smaller f number, right? Okay, so if you're finding that you're at one over 500 at f4 and you have an f2.8 lens, when you go from f4 to f2.8, that allows you to double your shutter speed for the same exposure. Okay, because each one is one stop of light in each direction. So going from f4 to f2.8 doubles the amount of light. and now going from

One over five hundred to one over a thousand halves the amount of light, so you end up back where you started. So f4 at five hundred is the same thing as f2.8 at one over a thousand. Now, are there a lot of lenses out there that go down to f2.8? No, they're pretty elite, but this might be, of course, the time to say, you know what, I'm shooting a lot of low light stuff, I'm shooting a lot of fast action stuff, I need to upgrade my lens, I need to rent a lens, and that might just be what it takes to get the job done.

In fact, the nomenclature for those f2.8 lenses and those lenses with low F numbers, they're called fast lenses because you can get fast shutter speed. So it's a very simple equation, and being able to get a smaller and smaller F number means you can push the limits faster and faster with your shutter speed.

So you can also inject stabilizers into your shot. So this might be internal body image stabilization or lens stabilization, like we talked about already. It could be a tripod, a monopod, a gimbal. It could be bracing your lens on a railing, maybe. But remember

those only freeze your hand movement. Okay, so you can have the biggest, fanciest gimbal out there, but that doesn't slow the wildlife down. That doesn't lessen the blur of wildlife. So just keep in mind that stabilizers are great. They are an excellent hack. They're a wonderful thing to have, but they're not a catch all and they're not gonna help you a whole lot in freezing wildlife movement.

The number one thing you can do is ramp that shutter speed up faster and faster. And again, the two main things you can do to balance that out is lower F number or higher ISO.

The next thing is lean into the blur. You know, we already talked about that. Embrace the blur, have it intentional. you know, sometimes it doesn't work, sometimes it does, but leaning into it is never a bad thing when it comes to the storytelling and the vibe and the feeling of photography.

The next one is probably my favorite. This is this is gonna be a big one for freezing motion, and this goes for just about everything out there from gently moving animals all the way to twitchy birds.

is if you notice a scene where you really need to freeze wildlife movement, put your camera's drive motor on the fastest possible, or at least the second fastest. Sometimes these things are wild and out of control at like 60 frames a second. You probably don't need that, but 20 or 30 frames a second can be absolutely amazing. So let's go back to that twitchy bird example. If you find that this bird from second to second is flying and moving and turning around and then it rests for a half a second.

What you're gonna find is if you're firing off 10, 20, 30 frames a second, is all of a sudden you're gonna get like a few shots every time it stops moving. So the high drive motor is probably the number one thing that you can do outside of changing your aperture and changing your ISO to increase the chances of getting frozen wildlife movement with slower shutter speeds. Because remember,

If you can photograph a resting still animal, you can probably go down to one over 250, maybe even slower. So if you capture it in those moments, even if they're split seconds, moments of resting or not moving, then all of a sudden you got the shot. So high drive motor, that's that's my number one hack of all these.

And the final one is more about intentional motion blur because remember if we get into these slow shutters, we start to inject the idea of hand movement. So remember if you're shooting at roughly one over the focal length and you're at a hundred millimeters or three hundred millimeters, you're at one or three hundredth of a second. But I just told you to shoot at one twentieth of a second. So how do you do that? Well

you gotta be as still as possible. So one way that I like to do it is of course hold my camera with both hands. I find that using the viewfinder actually helps because then there's a third point of contact, so hand to hand and forehead. And then what I do if I can, you know, being in a vehicle or on a walk or even on a canopy bridge makes it a little bit difficult. But

if you can get to put your elbows on your legs or elbows on the ground or somehow brace your elbows so there isn't that movement up and down from the hinging of your shoulders and movement of your arms, you're gonna find that that injects some pretty good stability into your shot. So three points of contact, both hands, forehead, and then both elbows on your knees or on your body or even on a railing is gonna be hugely helpful.

You can also brace your camera on something. I've shared my bandana trick with many people, and they're so delighted to learn this is that if you just simply tie a bandana or an old t-shirt on the front of your lens, you can actually rest that on metal objects, on bridges, without dinging your camera, without the metal to metal sound, and it gives you just a little bit of stability such you can brace that lens on something very, very solid, like a handrail, like the side of a vehicle.

and also not damage your camera and even buffer a little bit of movement if that vehicle is rumbling a little bit or coming to a stop. The bandana t-shirt trick does really, really well for bracing your camera for those slow shutters.

And the final final thing is I'm gonna talk about landscapes. So, what shutter speeds do you need for landscapes? So the great thing is that landscapes don't usually move. So I generally go for something like a one over 50 as my absolute slowest for good crisp landscapes, but again, it does depend now on your focal length. So if you're shooting at a 10 millimeter or a 16 millimeter or a 20 millimeter lens,

You might have a little bit more leeway. You might be able to shoot at 1/40 1/20 without bracing yourself with image stabilization and get a really crisp, clean shot. But the thing with landscapes is that blur shows up big time. You know, the I think the real emphasis of landscape shots is beautiful, clean, crisp, defined images. so with wildlife, the viewer knows that there's probably some movement. So there's just mentally in the back or the front of their mind a little bit more.

leeway a little bit more forgiveness if there's a just a slight out of focus and a slight movement but in landscapes if your camera's moving the whole landscape's gonna be blurred and there's really a lot less tolerance in the viewer's world for something that isn't a crisp clean sharp landscape shot so where I say one over fifty is my absolute slowest I'm really aiming honestly for like one over two hundred, one over two fifty even with a thirty five millimeter even with a twenty four millimeter I am

really overcompensating with my landscape shots. But then, you know, let's remember, landscapes don't move, and this is why tripods exist. A tripod is not going to slow down wildlife movement, but it is going to take your hand movement out of the equation. So if you're really into landscapes, bring a portable tripod, put your camera on the ground, brace it on something, get that camera to to be out of your hands and not moving if you really need to push the limits in low light photography with slow shutters.

And there we go. a dive into all the different shutter speeds that are recommended and possible and practical with freezing wildlife movement. And I hope you enjoyed some of the bonus tips, the hacks, and also some of that intentional motion blur because all these things are super helpful to me out in the field. And I hope they're helpful for you on your next photo adventure, whether it's in your backyard or in some far-flown corner of the world.

Before you go, I'd like to ask that you consider joining my e newsletter. I send a couple emails out a month. These are summaries of these articles. It might be a list of these shutter speeds. I'll also put these in the show notes, of course. but it might be topics that I don't cover in these podcasts, it might be new video announcements, it might be some conservation tips, it might be wildlife information.

So check out my website and join my e newsletter at www.courtwhelan.com and I'd love to see ya on my mailing list. I look forward to being in touch and I of course look forward to the next episode. Thanks, y'all.


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Court Whelan

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