Since most of us don’t live in the wild, we need to find creative ways to photograph nature. Insects make excellent subjects since they are small and have interesting features. With insects, you get to use the macro feature on your digital camera to get all the interesting details.

Butterflies are fluttery but intriguing creatures as they flit from flower to flower. You always have to chase them to get that perfect shot. Butterfiles are hard to capture at the perfect angle. I have tried this a lot of times but sometimes, they are just too volatile as a subject.

Other subjects for nature photography can be found at a zoo. Since they are already bored with all those people staring at them day in and day out, zoo animals have a tendency to give you their best shot.

During a recent zoo trip, I got a picture of these 2 birds. They were around 15 feet up, since it was a good sized cage. I was using the Canon s5is digital camera on this trip.

Sometimes when your lens is too near the cage, the cage just blurs away. Anyway, what struck me at that time is that these birds are just like 2 people gossiping. Probably they were talking about the strange girl taking pictures of them down below.
 
The ostrich in this picture was quite extraordinary, she had the most beautiful feathers at the front but unfortunately the back end was quite bare. As I was preparing to take a shot, she suddenly turned to me and posed.

Its kind of weird but she refused to move until I took a shot of her best angle, then she swiftly turned and moved out of photo range. Normally in doing nature photography you must learn the value of patience, but in this case the ostrich wanted to be photographed.

You can do the most mundane subject like flowers or have a more challenging subject like birds, the motto is "Patience is a virtue"
 
So grab a friend and visit the zoo.  In the words of Simon & Garfunkel:

Someone told me
It’s all happening at the zoo.
I do believe it,
I do believe it’s true.

Somethin’ tells me
It’s all happening at the zoo.