Peter Menner Photo

Peter Menner Photo Peter Menner - Photographer for wildlife and nature, as well as aviation Peter Menner is a photographer from Stuttgart, Germany.

His portfolio covers a wide range with photos of aviation, nature wildlife and a lot more. Find his latest photos here or on his website https://www.mennerphoto.com. His photos are sold as GalleryPrints or for editorial usage as digital delivery.

Take a second look at this one — the terrapin isn't sitting on wet sand, it's fully underwater.What reads at first like ...
21/07/2026

Take a second look at this one — the terrapin isn't sitting on wet sand, it's fully underwater.
What reads at first like a dry riverbank with a shallow puddle is actually clear water sitting over sand, clean enough that the camera can see straight through to the bottom. The green isn't on the shell — it's algae-tinted water between the lens and the terrapin, sitting like a curtain over one side of the frame.
Getting a shot like this depends entirely on water clarity that's mostly out of your control. A bit more silt in the water and this becomes an unreadable green smear instead of a clean, almost aerial-looking frame.
Photographed in Kruger National Park.
Did you clock it was underwater right away, or did it take a second look?

Not every wildlife photo needs a hunt, a chase, or a confrontation. Sometimes it's just two tree squirrels sharing a stu...
20/07/2026

Not every wildlife photo needs a hunt, a chase, or a confrontation. Sometimes it's just two tree squirrels sharing a stump in good light.
There's something almost domestic about this one — one squirrel braced against the other's back, both holding still just long enough for the light to catch them properly. No tension, no story arc, just a quiet moment on a dead tree stump.
Photographed in Kruger National Park, in that warm side light right before the harsher midday sun takes over.
What do you think — is a calm, ordinary moment like this one more or less interesting to look at than the action shots?

There's a short window at the end of the day — maybe five minutes — when the sun sits low enough that anything backlit s...
19/07/2026

There's a short window at the end of the day — maybe five minutes — when the sun sits low enough that anything backlit seems to catch fire. This is that window.
A Ring-necked Dove, wings fully spread mid-flight, lit from directly behind by the last light of the day. The feather edges glow amber and gold while the body stays almost silhouetted, and even the dust hanging in the air picks up the light, scattered like embers around the bird.
This kind of light doesn't wait. It shows up, it's spectacular for a few minutes, and then it's gone — which means being in position and ready before it happens, not after.
Kruger National Park, right at the edge of sunset.

No distance left between you and this. 🦁A full-frame lion, close enough to count the scars. This isn't a portrait — it's...
18/07/2026

No distance left between you and this. 🦁
A full-frame lion, close enough to count the scars. This isn't a portrait — it's a confrontation, and the black and white treatment strips away anything that might soften it.
Nothing performative about this stare. Just a lion, mid-roar, filling every inch of the frame with nowhere left for the eye to look except back at it.

Small owl, serious attitude — and a deliberate exposure trick behind that clean white backdrop.This is a Pearl-spotted O...
17/07/2026

Small owl, serious attitude — and a deliberate exposure trick behind that clean white backdrop.
This is a Pearl-spotted Owlet, despite the name one of the smallest owl species in Africa, barely the size of a fist. What it lacks in size it makes up for in expression — that stare is doing a lot of work in this frame.

Let's talk about the water in this one, because it's doing more work than the bird is.This is a Hammerkop, standing in a...
16/07/2026

Let's talk about the water in this one, because it's doing more work than the bird is.
This is a Hammerkop, standing in a stream in Kruger National Park. That smooth, silky look to the water isn't a filter or an editing trick — it comes straight from the shutter speed at capture: 1/8th of a second, which is unusually slow for a wildlife shot with a living, moving subject in it.
Camera Settings:
Canon EOS R5 | RF 100-500mm F4.5-7.1L IS USM @ 128mm
f/9 | 1/8s | ISO 500
The tradeoff is real: at 1/8s, any movement from the bird blurs immediately. This shot only works because the Hammerkop held its head tucked and nearly motionless for that fraction of a second — long enough for the water to smear into motion while the bird itself stayed crisp. Miss that stillness by even a fraction and the whole frame falls apart.
It's a reminder that sometimes the technical risk (a slow shutter with a live subject) is exactly what makes a photo more interesting than the "safe" fast-shutter version would have been.
Would you have risked the slow shutter here, or played it safe?

This one's about restraint.Most wildlife photos try to fill the frame — dramatic sky, rich color, a busy scene. This is ...
15/07/2026

This one's about restraint.
Most wildlife photos try to fill the frame — dramatic sky, rich color, a busy scene. This is the opposite approach: a high-key edit that pushes the entire sky to pure white, leaving nothing but negative space above the herd. It's a deliberate choice, not a missed exposure — the emptiness is what makes the elephants read as a family moving through open country, rather than just "elephants in a landscape."
Look at the detail once the eye settles: calves walking tucked in against adults, a second small group in the middle distance, more of the herd fading off toward the tree line on the right. Elephant herds don't move as scattered individuals — they move as one coordinated unit, pace set by the slowest member, usually a calf.
Photographed in Kruger National Park.
Does the empty sky pull you in, or would you want more context in the frame? Genuinely curious how this reads to others.

Small subject, big lens, and a lot of waiting.This is an African Stonechat, photographed in Kruger National Park at 600m...
14/07/2026

Small subject, big lens, and a lot of waiting.
This is an African Stonechat, photographed in Kruger National Park at 600mm. At that focal length you can photograph a bird this size without disturbing it — but it also means an incredibly shallow margin for error. Nail the focus on the eye or the shot doesn't work at all.
The wide-open f/4 aperture is doing two jobs here: it melts the grass in the background into soft gold, and it isolates the bird against clean blue sky above. The fast shutter speed (1/2500s) freezes any micro-movement — birds shift their weight and head constantly, even when they look still.
This is one of those shots where the settings matter almost as much as being in the right place. Any photographers here shoot much with long primes like this?

First guess when you see this one: drone shot, right? It's not.This crocodile was photographed from directly above using...
13/07/2026

First guess when you see this one: drone shot, right? It's not.
This crocodile was photographed from directly above using a long lens from a cliff edge overlooking the water in Kruger National Park — no drone involved at all. Getting a true top-down angle from the ground means finding actual elevation and a clean sightline straight down, which is a lot rarer than it sounds. Most "aerial-style" wildlife shots people assume are drone work are actually just photographers finding the right cliff, ridge, or riverbank at the right height.
What makes the perspective work here is what it removes: no sky, no horizon, no sense of depth. Just the crocodile's shape and texture nearly disappearing into the rock beneath it. From eye level, this would've been an unremarkable "croc on a rock" photo. From straight above, it becomes a study in camouflage.
Anyone else surprised this wasn't a drone shot?

Let's talk technique for a second.This is a Cape buffalo — but you could argue the real subject of this photo is the dar...
12/07/2026

Let's talk technique for a second.
This is a Cape buffalo — but you could argue the real subject of this photo is the darkness, not the animal. Almost the entire frame is black, and that's not a processing choice, it's an exposure choice made in the field.
When you shoot into low side light like this, your camera's metering system will try to "correctly" expose the shadows — which means lifting them, flattening the image, and losing the whole effect. The move here is to ignore that instinct completely: meter for the highlights only (the horn edges, the wet nose, the eye), and let everything else fall to pure black. What you get is a subject built entirely out of light, with the darkness doing as much work as the animal does.
It's a technique that rewards patience more than gear — you're waiting for the animal to turn its head into exactly the right angle relative to the light source, and you often only get one or two frames where it lines up.
Photographers — do you expose for shadows or highlights when you're working in low light like this? Curious how others approach it.

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