6 safety tips for travelers when viewing and photographing wildlife

It's summer vacation season in the northern hemisphere. Travelers are visiting cities across North America, Europe, Central America and Asia. Vacationers are seeking travel to see nature in action while visiting national parks, rain forests and even underwater reefs.

Some vacationers are planning ecotours of fragile, generally pristine and relatively undisturbed natural areas.

Many are planning trips to see and photograph wildlife in their native habitat in hot spots like the Galapagos archipelago off Ecuador, South Africa’s Kruger National Park, the great parks of Tanzania and Kenya, as well as Svalbard and Greenland in the Arctic and Alaska's huge Denali National Park.

Advanced Long Lens Techniques

More and more travelers, including travel photographers, are choosing destinations to see wildlife. They're interested in conservation, the environment, along with viewing and photographing wildlife in their natural habitat.

At some of these locations a good DSLR, with a telephoto lens having a focal length of 200mm will suffice, as you can get fairly close to the animals, but generally you'll need a 300mm lens or longer, and 400mm or longer could be a real help.

I found that even in the Galapagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, which Charles Darwin's book, “Origin of Species,” made famous, where many of the birds and other wildlife have a small “circle of fear,” you often need a lens with a 400mm focal length.

The “Circle of Fear” is the distance from an animal, inside of which, the animal has discomfort or distress from the photographer's or observer's presence, which may cause the animal to flee.

In other locations, such as an African safari, or a hike in Denali, a super-telephoto focal length of 500mm or more is virtually a “must.”