Carol Freeman will tell you that her photography starts with her approach to her subjects. Literally.

"I've heard people complain, ‘I went for a walk in the woods and didn't see anything.' Well, chances are they scared it all away," Carol says. "The best thing they can do is go to a favorite nature area and sit still for 15 minutes."

Carol says you can spend a lot of time in a small area and not feel the least bit limited. "Along the path of a prairie you can shoot hundreds of pictures in a few square yards and feel you've seen the world. Spiders, bees, flowers, birds...the diversity is amazing."

Then there's her approach to essential gear. "I joke with people that I'm probably the world's laziest photographer," Carol says. "I carry a fanny pack, a water bottle, bug spray, my camera and three lenses—one on the camera, two in the pack. If I can't get the shot with that, I'm doing something wrong."

No tripod?

"I don't like carrying a tripod—it's heavy, and it can scare the wildlife, especially in close-up photography. You pull out the leg and whatever you're looking at is gone; or you move it and the grasshopper has jumped. And I find it easier to make the small compositional adjustments—like those fractions to the left or right that will get a reflection on a dragonfly's wing—without a tripod, which doesn't always move the way I want it to. I like to shoot down a lot, and it's difficult to maneuver a tripod into that position—and if I'm lying down, which I often am, I rest my elbows on the ground and form my own tripod."

For close-up photography, Carol's three lenses are likely to be two Micro-NIKKORS—the AF-S VR 105mm f/2.8G IF-ED and the AF 200mm f/4D IF-ED—and an AF-S VR NIKKOR 300mm f/2.8G IF-ED.

"The 300 has a short minimum focusing distance [about seven feet], and I find I can often use it for close-ups." Her camera is a D3X, which replaced the D2X as the workhorse.

Carol most often prefers to manually focus the lenses. "In the macro situation, even at f/11, I'm getting only a small point of focus, and I want to control where that point is. I want the center of the flower or the tip of the flower or a particular drop of dew in focus. I think that's where the artistic control comes in, deciding the point of focus. That precise point determines what your picture is going to look like."

She generally spot meters the scene and shoots in aperture priority with exposure compensation set for -2/3. "The nice thing about nature photography is that you can almost always find something green, and I know green is -2/3 of a stop as a general rule; the slight underexposure gives me richer colors."

At the right pace and with the right gear, the rest is observation. "I'm often attracted by movement," Carol says. "I love the insects, the butterflies, the grasshoppers. I see something flitting around and if I get close and sit on the ground and wait, a whole new world opens up."

For several years Carol's world has included her endangered species project. "About six years ago I started getting requests from magazines for endangered species photos, and I didn't have them. I thought, well, if they're making these requests, there are probably very few people who have these pictures, maybe I should get some. I started doing the research, and it turns out there are 483 threatened and endangered species in Illinois, where I live—plants, animals, insects, birds, everything. I've shot so far 115 of them; I get about 15 to 20 species a year if I'm lucky."

The project quickly grew beyond her desire to simply have photos to provide to clients. "I started a not-for-profit organization called Team Green Environmental Network, which will be putting together school exhibits. We would like to do a book of photos, and we're working on a museum exhibit, too."

Her goal is to inspire. "My philosophy is, if you get out into nature, you will begin to appreciate it, and if you appreciate it, you'll want to protect it."

You can see many more of Carol's photographs at her website. There's information about Team Green Environmental Network at www.teamgreenweb.org. Carol's photos of threatened and endangered species are at www.flickr.com/photos/teamgreenweb.

Carol Freeman has been an NPS member since 2002.