Start now to practice with your camera. Photographers - please expand on or correct my comments. I need to learn a lot more and can use the advice.
In wandering around the web looking at various hunting and personal sites, I notice that a lot of the photos taken in the field are best described as crap. One of the biggest problems is shadows. I know it's hard to turn a moose around to get the sun behind the photographer, but a lot can be done to get a hunter's face in better light. Go to
http://www.huntamerica.com/photo_gallery/. The opening page and the cape buffalo shots both have very bad shadows. If you are going to spend the money for a trophy hunt, then spend the time to practice with your camera as well as your rifle. The photos will last a lot longer than the steaks so do them right. A quality 10x12 photo hanging with a huge rack really adds to your wall. I'm sure no expert photographer, but I can make a few suggestions:
There are some very good 35mm cameras available now for under $100. The APS cameras will take good shots, but the negatives are so small that you can't enlarge them very well. I suggest staying with 35mm. Make sure you have a self-timer.
A lot of modern cameras will let you use a flash in bright daylight. This will eliminate a lot of bad shadows by throwing light under a hat or to the dark side of a face. A flash would have helped both photos in the above gallery. Tip your hat back to eliminate shadows under the bill. They can ruin the shot of your face.
Turn the corpse so that you see as little blood as possible. You can also arrange a gun, some brush, or whatever to cover up blood.
VERY IMPORTANT. Rub some dry dirt on the animal's eyes, particularly when using a flash. Otherwise you will get laser eyes in the photos. The red-eye setting that's on most modern cameras doesn't work when the subject is dead.
Hunting alone? I carry a mini-tripod. It's about 6' high and weighs less than a candy bar (king size). I carry a big spring clamp (found anywhere that woodworking tools are sold) and can clamp the folded tripod legs to almost anything.
Take a half dozen or so shots from different angles. Pictures are cheap and this will greatly increase the odds of getting a good one.
If your camera has a zoom, back off and zoom out. Close, wide-angle shots distort things. A hunter sitting behind a deer will look normal zoomed out, but the same shot taken close with wide angle will greatly increase the size of the deer in relation to the hunter. You often see this in hunting photos on purpose to exaggerate the size of the rack. It does make the rack look bigger but I think it makes the photo look fake. You bowhunters who are familiar with Chuck Adams' photos will recognize this. He does it all the time. His elk racks look 8 ft tall, but they don't look natural.
I have a half baked site at
http://www.geocities.com/rlfuehrer/rlfuehrer.html Look at the picture of my spike elk. I took this with a self timer and the camera clamped to my backpack. I used a flash and got rid of some bad shadows. Unfortunately, I got some healthy flash glare in my glasses. I haven't figured out yet how to eliminate that. I had a much better shot of the elk, but my head was cut off. It's hard to set up a self-timer shot, so TAKE PLENTY OF SHOTS. You can't go back later to try for a better one. The antelope photo was taken right at sunset by my partner. I turned it around to get the sun at my friend's back. Unfortunately, he got his shadow in there. I cropped most of it out, but some still shows and it's a lot worse in the original print. I made a mistake here in not tipping my cap back to get the shadow out of my
