Online collection of photos is popularly known as a stock photo website. The stock photo websites house a great collection of images on various subjects such as humans, technology, automobile, wellness, and gadgets etc. One of the categories we find on these websites is wildlife stock of images. This category is a broad category under which the subcategories may include images of birds, animals, insects, landscapes, jungles, trees and other wildlife related images.

They are available widely on the Internet. All you need is to search for the term ‘wildlife stock photos’ and you are done. The search engine may display hundreds of stock photo websites that offer wildlife snaps.

While some photo stock websites may offer royalty free wildlife photos to be used free of cost, others may charge for them. On some websites, a small photo could be available for free but then a high-resolution photo could cost you a penny. A premium account on such photo stock sites allows the user to download some number of photos a day with limited quota say five photos a day or 100 photos a month. However, it depends on the account type, and it differs from site to site.

The photos of wildlife may have different sizes and types. For instance, a website may offer .jpeg or .png image or for the designers, it may also offer wildlife vector illustrations so that they can use the photos in different ways. Vector images come with no restriction as stretching images does not lose the pixels and so the quality. This does not happen with popular .jpeg images.

The photos available on genuine photo stock sites are of good quality. They have been taken by professional photographers. The best part of such websites is you can get photos as small as a postcard or as big as a hoarding size using vector. The photos always come with preview so that you can look at the details before using it or making a purchase.

You can use wildlife photos on your blogs, websites, banners, products or anywhere you want. Enjoy quality photos and make your content lovelier than ever.

Lightness, also called value (Munsell) or tone, is defined as a colors placement on a brightness scale ranging from black to white. The Munsell color space, for example, divides the lightness axis, called value, into ten equidistant steps. Lightness, on the other hand, stems from the HSL (Hue, Saturation, Lightness) and Lab color spaces where it is used similarly to Munsell value only in percent. The HSV (Hue, Saturation, Value) color space speaks not of lightness but of value and uses the word value differently than Munsell does. In HSV value ranges from black to not white, but to the fully saturated color. Paints can be made lighter or darker by adding white or black, but that also reduces saturation. “Tone” is an obsolete term that stems from darkroom photography to denote the lightness of a specific area of the print. Yet “tone” is still used in art where light and dark are built up with charcoal or similar drawing medium

In digital photography lightness can be calculated simply as (r+g+b)/3. However, that does not take into account that green is brighter than red and blue darker than red. In the IUV color space the relative brightness of the color channels is taken into consideration, like this: i=(76*r+150*g+29*b)/256; It approximately says that green is twice as bright as red and red is 2½ times brighter than blue.

In painting the term “tone” denotes an intermediate between gray and pure color. “Tint” denotes a mixture of pure color with white and “shade” denotes a mixture of pure color with black. In the real world tint and tone are not a simple as the theory implies, because though they do not have color in themselves, when white or black are mixed with a color, the color changes hue. In other words, black in mixtures behaves like a blueish color. For example if you mix yellow and black you don’t just get a darker yellow, but you get a darker and greenish yellow. Similarly will an addition of white make a color appear colder.

In software you can digitally create tints and tones by converting from the RGB color space to IUV or Lab color space and raise the L (lightness) channel as described above. This will not alter the hue of the color as when you mix pigments with black or white.

Some basic ideas will help you be a successful digital photographer. Often, beginners are advised to use a technique called “compose in thirds”. To do this, you must imagine four lines, two horizontal and two vertical, like placing a tic-tac-toe board across the image. The idea is to line your main subject with one of the intersections and not place them in the center. For other photos, placing the focus in the center of the imaginary grid results in a perfect photo.

Another technique used in digital photography is to keep your camera steady. Otherwise, you will end up with a blurry image. Holding the camera correctly is the simplest way to prevent shakes which is holding it with both hands. Although this might seem obvious, many new photographers fail to realize that this is what is needed to increase stability. A tripod or monopod can also be useful tools. Another way of preventing blurriness is to match the shutter speed to the lens’ focal strength. For example, a 100 mm lens should be matched with a minimum shutter speed of 1/1000th of a second.

The Sunny 16 rule is an important one for shooting outdoors. It aids the photographer in predicting the camera’s meter in bright conditions. For a camera with ISO 100, an f/16 aperture and 1/100 shutter speed must be used. According to the rule, for a camera with ISO 125, set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1/125. The lower part of the fraction in the shutter speed will match the ISO of the camera with f/16 always used as the aperture. The Sunny 16 rule is an especially important technique for those using cameras without an LCD display.

When you are ready to take your digital photography skills to the next level, a polarizing filter for the camera lens will be a good investment. It reduces reflections on the lens that can come from metal, glass or water and also enhances the colors of the sky. The filter also protects your camera, particularly if you like to take photographs outside.

Landscapes are a popular type of subject for photographers and can be improved if you try to create a sense of depth. To use this technique, you will need a wide-angle lens that is made for taking panoramic shots. Also, using a small aperture of f/16 will help to add sharpness to the background and foreground.

To increase the light for indoor shots, increase the camera’s ISO to between 800 and 1600 and use its widest aperture setting. This allows the light to reach the sensor easier so that the background will be blurred. For outdoor photos, don’t use the flash at all.

For taking action shots, the panning technique is an essential one, especially for beginners. Adjusting the shutter speed lower than two steps will help you more effectively capture a moving subject. That means for 1/250, adjust to 1/60. You can also use a tripod or monopod to stabilize your shot and create a better output.

Use (ND) neutral density filter

Neutral Density filters are normally available in different stops. The type you choose really depends on how long the exposure needs to be and also on the brightness of the day.

Focus first

It will become nearly impossible to autofocus especially if you are using ND filter that is very dense. Sometimes, it may even be impossible to focus it manually. The reason for this is that ND filter will only allow a certain amount of light to pass through it although your autofocus definitely requires more light for it to function. The same is also true for your eyes. This means that you will first have to remove the ND filter, compose and then manually focus the shot and then finally replace the filter back and shoot. It is not advisable to use autofocus for the step because your camera will attempt to refocus the shots after replacing the filter.

Make use of NDCalc.

With this simple app (available for both Android and iPhone), it is possible to get the right exposure even with the ND filter attached. In order to use this tool, you need to use your camera’s meter to take a reading (without ND filter). After that, inform the app of the exposure time that your camera came got, as well as the type of ND filter that you are using. It will tell you the duration that exposure ought to be.

Take the best photo during the magic hour

The magic hours are times just before sunset and just after sunrise. Even with daytime exposure, it would still be a lot better to take shots during the magic hours. This will give you better contrast against the cloud, something that will make the movements there to be more dramatic.

Have your goals in mind

The weather will not matter at all if you aim to capture the misty look of the water. However, if you intend to capture cloud movement, you need to be more careful in your choice of weather. You require a day that is partly cloudy with decent winds. If a day is fully overcast, forget about getting that beautiful streak appearance as it will be too cloudy. On the other hand, a windless day is likely to offer you only scant sky movement.

Filters allow some wavelengths of light to pass through them, while blocking others from reaching the film, and so they alter specific grey tone values. As a rule of thumb, a coloured filter will allow light of its own colour to pass making its grey tone equivalent lighter, while contrasting colours are blocked resulting in their grey tone equivalent becoming darker. To put it another way, filters generally allow the user to make one set of colours darker, while complimentary colours become lighter.

The scene or subject being photographed often determines the choice of colour filter used, but yellow and orange are by far the most valuable tools for day-to-day photography.

The single most useful and versatile colour filter for black and white film photography is “yellow”. Yellow suppresses its opposite colour of blue, so will slightly darken skies and bring out the clouds. It also helps penetrate haze and fog. Simultaneously, it slightly lightens related colours (those next to it in the colour spectrum): greens, yellows, oranges and lighter reds. This gives improved differentiation between dissimilar colours, resulting in a more natural look to flesh, and improved contrast in foliage (which is usually many shades of green).

The classic use of yellow filters is landscape photography, but its wider application is any shot with sky, vegetation, or people in the frame. This covers many situations and makes the yellow filter almost compulsory for black and white film photography. If you don’t have a yellow filter, go any buy one now!

Perhaps the second most useful filter is orange. If you’ve been following the explanation so far, you might have guessed than an orange filter does much the same as a yellow filter, but to a greater degree. Blue skies will be recorded in darker tones, with bold contrast between the sky and clouds. An orange filter will also better penetrate haze and fog. In portrait photography, an orange filter gives skin a healthy, smooth look by reducing the appearance of freckles and blemishes. Orange is also good for architecture because it can increase contrast between different materials and enhance texture (bricks are orange so they appear lighter).

An orange filter tends to add a little more excitement. It’s an excellent choice when a more dramatic effect is required. Buy one.

A red filter, as you’ve probably guessed, takes things even further, but to something of an extreme: it’s not for everyone or every day use. A red filter will turn a blue sky almost black and make clouds really stand out. It’s dramatic, and will increase visibility in haze and fog. Beyond that, it’s uses are somewhat specialised, in particular, to increase tonal contrast between flowers and foliage in plant photography (although I can’t understand why anyone would want to shoot flowers in black and white). Orange has the same additional application, for a lesser effect.

Green filters are less useful. They give a boost to grass and trees, but also lighten the sky, which can be countered productive. A green filter is mainly used for photographing plants as it helps separate the green foliage from the brightly coloured flowers.

Blue filters tend to darken most colours (except blue, which it lightens) and so increase the contrast in an image, which can used be to emphasise mist and haze. Personally, I wouldn’t bother with green or blue filters, and would probably give red a miss too.

There is one more incredibly useful filter, which is even more valuable in colour photography: a polarizing filter. There are two types, but the one to buy is a circular filter. Without getting into a boring explanation about the different types of polarizing filters, I’ll just say circulars can usually be turned while fitted to a lens, so that the effect they have is seen in the viewfinder, and adjustable. The filter is used to manage reflections, or suppress glare. It’s possible to make these either appear or disappear; depending on the effect you want. Because reflections and skylight tend to be made-up of partially polarized light, a polarizing filter can be used to change the balance of the light in the photograph. What’s great about it is – what you see is what you get – and what you get depends upon what angle you twiddle it to.

There are other types of filter, mainly concerned with light level reduction, or special effects, but they’re not essential for everyday photography. There are also filters that are extremely common, but don’t do very much: skylight and UV filters. These tend to be employed as lens protectors, and that’s fine, but if you use a good quality lens, then they don’t accomplish much, and could even diminish the performance of a great lens. You’d be better off buying a yellow or orange filter.

The final word on filters has to be about exposure compensation, or “filter factors”. Filters usually have the overall effect of reducing the amount of light transmitted. Filters are therefore normally marked with a filter factor (such as 1.5x, 2x, 3x etc.). A factor of 2x, for example, means that the unfiltered exposure value should multiply by a factor of 2. In other words, the lens aperture has to be opened by one stop (twice as much light). A factor of 4x would be two stops extra, and so on. You only need worry about this if taking a light reading with a hand-held meter. A TTL metering camera, or one that has the “electric eye” around the lens (and is covered by the filter), will automatically meter correctly.