Excuse the slightly clickbait-y title, but this is a pretty excellent tip for anyone wanting to get more into wildlife photography:
Get a ghillie suit.
Seriously, if you haven’t already, you should. They’re amazing. You can pick up something like the above for around £25.00. It fits in your bag, it’s easy to put on over the top of your usual clothing, and it greatly reduces your chances of being spotted by wildlife, in turn greatly increasing your chances of seeing wildlife up close.
Case in point; this wild hare. I was walking up through a spot of woodland, when much to my surprise as I reached the corner of my path, I could see what I initially thought was a muntjac deer, given the sheer size of the thing. Soon I realised it was a huge hare.
Luckily I was wearing the jacket part of my ghillie suit, so quickly crouched down, pulled the hood up and started snapping away.
Then, in a moment of great excitement/panic, it became clear the hare was heading straight in my direction, so I quickly optimised my settings for the shot (expecting some pretty swift movements), and tracked it all the way.
Sure enough, it came casually sauntering up the path towards me, completely oblivious to my presence (- stillness really is your friend in these situations). It was only when it was within around 12 feet that the hare realised I was there. Had I been in the full gear and hidden within the bushes - instead of on the open path - I dare say it wouldn’t have realised, even then. At this point it darted off out of the woods immediately, probably trying to work out what on earth it had just seen.
This ranks as one of my favourite wildlife experiences. It might sound corny, but it always feels like a real honour and privilege to be in the presence of truly wild animals like this.
I’ve had several experiences a bit like this over the years, largely thanks to the camouflage afforded by the ghillie suit, so again, I can’t recommend them enough to anyone wanting to get closer (quite literally) to nature.
The above were shot with the Nikon Z 400mm f4.5 at 1/1250, f4.5, ISO-25600. As such, I put them through DxO Pure Raw 4 for some subtle noise reduction (people really overdo it on these programs I find) before editing in Capture One.