I’m not a big time bird photographer – if something cool lands near me and I have the right lens I’ll give it a crack. Given that New Zealand is kind of the land of the birds that happens quite a bit. If you’re like me and you want to be able to make the most of the cool birds you see these tips might help you out.
- Human psychology – Get the eyes sharp. The human brain expects the eyes to be sharp, if they’re less in focus than another part of the body people will feel like something is off with your picture. There is of course a heap of exceptions where having the eyes out of focus works – but unless thats what you’re after, make it your business to get the eyes super in-focus when you take the photo. A really easy way to get the eyes in focus is to set your camera to single point focus. Once it’s set all you do is make sure the birds eyes are in the single point of focus and you’ll be sweet.
- Its Hunting. We’re a bit lucky here with some really trusting native birds, but by and large most birds aren’t too keen on having people getting up close. Think like a hunter – don’t just walk up to a bird, use cover to hide yourself, approach slowly and avoid jerky or fast movements. Like hunters, the more you know about your “prey” the easier it becomes to know where you’ll find them, how to approach and when the best time to photograph them will be.
- Capture behaviour – not just the bird. The easiest way to make your bird photographs more dynamic is to capture the birds natural behaviour. If you can capture some unique or rarely seen behaviour even a photo of the most common bird species can become an exciting shot.
- Expose for bird not background. Its happened to me plenty of times – a dark bird on a white sandy beach, check the exposure and take the shot only to find I’ve created some kind of crappy silhouette shot. Always remember to expose for the bird, not whats around it – an over exposed background is no where near as bad as an underexposed subject.
- Shutter speeds. Particularly if you’re using a telephoto lens its important to watch your shutter speed. A general rule is that the shutter speed should be the same or more than the lenses focal length (for example a 200mm lens should be shot at 1/200th of a second or faster). Of course things like VR and image stabilisation come into play, but if you use the rule as a guide you’ll have less blurry shots. Another consideration with shutter speed is if your subject is moving (or you are) – I generally won’t shoot slower than 1/250th of a second if I’m photographing a flying bird – even a small amount of motion blur can ruin a shot.
Bonus tip – New Zealand Bird & Nature Photography’s Facebook page is an awesome place to see amazing bird photos.
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