Excellent topic and one that will be invaluable for wildlife artists. This genre of art has improved out of sight in recent decades with good cameras and the ability to get in close to the action, freeze otherwise unseen movement, etc etc.
You asked if we have any tips. Possibly the biggest tips I can offer are patience and effort. Here's an example. Just a holiday snap, until you realise that this is my wife, almost at the very top of Mount Kenya, and without making the effort to get up there, 'pied piper' situations like this might never have happened. Be prepared to put some work in.
With the following photos, I would have spent upwards of two hours each to get them. I have stacks of photos of the same animal and can now, as you said in another post, choose to use a number of references to create a painting. This is really where patience can work for you.
The rare 'Gerenuk', photographed in Amboseli National Park in Kenya
and the painting that resulted from some of the photos I got
And finally, put yourself out there. Go to where you can get the best reference material. To me, that means go to where they are wild and free, but while you are home, go to the zoo. In this case I did a 'working with wildlife' course at Monarto Zoological Park in the Adelaide Hills and got to feed the zebras, take part in the autopsy of a fox, help dart a giraffe and other things.
Photography can be fun. You don't need the absolute best equipment. That certainly helps, but it's important to try and get out there to start off with, and use what you've got. Patience and hard work can bring incredible rewards and experience.
