Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Wildlife and Bird Photography Bag of Tricks

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Wildlife and Bird Photography


Probably the best piece of advice I can offer when it comes to photographing birds and wildlife is to be patient. Patience is essential. You can’t exactly instruct a bird to sit on a branch in a particular way. Try telling an elephant to hold his head a little more to the right because the light is perfect at just that angle. No, you have to wait for your subject to naturally move to where you want it. Often a bird will be sitting with its back to you and then suddenly hop around and then fly off. The moment when it turned to face you was perfect but time is off the essence. 

You must be prepared and ready to shoot.

Sitting patiently waiting for the right moment is certainly not a waste of time. This is time when you can learn valuable information about the habits and behaviour of your subject. I was recently running a photography workshop in Costa Rica photographing, amongst other things, hummingbirds. Wow, they are so quick and quite a challenge. 

As we all watched their amazing behaviour it became clear to my group and I that patterns were developing. I recall one tiny Talamanca Hummingbird was zipping all over the place never staying still for a moment but then I noticed that he was landing on a mossy branch and staying there for a few moments before darting off for more nectar. This behaviour was repeated time and again. Rather than chasing all over and trying to focus on the lightning quick bird I waited for it to land at its usual spot and fired away. 



Similarly, obtaining a shot of a hummingbird in flight required considerable patience and study. A number of birds were hovering and darting to and fro under and around a cluster of flowers. They would stay for mere seconds and then depart at lightning speed. The key to getting a shot was that they repeated this behaviour regularly.  I set up using manual focus with my lens focused on the flower cluster. Each time the birds came in I would shoot off a series using the high speed continuous shutter setting and hope that one would be in focus and in a good position. 

Many of the images were useless as for the majority of the time the birds came in to the front facing away from me or from behind where they were obscured by the flowers. I finally managed a keeper when this Green Violetear departed below the flowers. Lots of trial and error but in many cases that is the nature of wildlife photography.




Larger animals too, often require patience and study to obtain a decent image. Observing the interaction of the numerous animals at an African waterhole is very entertaining and sets you up to shoot better images. The zebra in the image below were longing to go down to the water for a drink but they would come no further because of Simba lying there having a rest. It was marvellous to watch them approach with their ears ever alert for a sound and watching for any sign of movement from the lion. The slightest movement from the lion and they were off in a flurry of stripes. The perfect recipe for some wonderful shots. 




So, you’ve been patient, observed your target and have a good idea of what your subject will behave. You still need the right gear to achieve your goals. There is no getting away from the fact that, in most cases, for wildlife and bird photography you need a long telephoto lens. For larger animals (if they are close enough) you might get by with a 300mm focal length but for birds you will struggle with anything under 400mm. A crop sensor camera helps somewhat here as it effectively multiplies the behaviour of a telephoto lens by a factor of 1.5 for Nikon, Sony, Pentax, 1.6 for Canon or even 2 in the case of 4/3 systems. This means that if you are shooting with a 400mm lens on a Nikon D500 the lens will behave like a 600mm lens.

The recent developments in telephoto zoom lenses have put bird and wildlife within much easier reach than ever before. Both Tamron and Sigma produce 150-600mm zoom lenses of outstanding quality at very reasonable prices. All the photos in this article were taken using a Tamron 150-600 G2 zoom lens. There is no doubt that long prime lenses 400, 500, 600 etc. are of amazing quality and generally perform better in adverse light conditions but they are very expensive and very heavy. I still use a Nikon 400 f/2.8 VR lens and love it but the weight (almost 6kgs) often means that I will leave it behind when travelling by air.




To finish off here I’ll give you my little bag of  tips to help improve your bird and wildlife photography. 

  • Always focus on the eye or head of the animal or bird. If the eye is not sharp the image just wont work.


  • Use High Speed Continuous shooting and fire off bursts. Yes, you will need to do some culling later on but you are greatly increasing your chances of nailing a great image. 


  • Try and shoot from the eye level of your subject. Get low, get high. Whatever it takes to get eye level will make a huge difference to your image. A bird in a tree can be more difficult so just move away to make the angle less acute. Shooting wildlife from a vehicle is great as the vehicle will often be tolerated more readily than a person on the ground. Being in the vehicle does make it more difficult to shoot at eye level. Have your driver position the vehicle on lower ground if possible. Use the window rather than the pop-top roof to better the angle.


  • Use Aperture Priority mode and shoot wide open or just off wide open.  This will produce the lovely soft Bokeh and also ensure you achieve the highest shutter speed for the circumstances. One or two third stops off wide open will often produce sharper images being nearer to the lens sweet spot. For example if your maximum aperture is f/6.3 shooting at f/8 will produce a better result. 

  • For moving subjects, and especially birds in flight, shoot in Shutter Priority or Time Value mode and adjust your shutter speed up to 1/2000s or faster. 


  • Experiment with your metering. I find that spot metering works best for me when shooting wildlife and birds as it measures the light from the most important place being the bird or animal. The background is not important for the exposure so using spot metering just concentrates on the subject. 


  • Be mindful of the need for using exposure compensation when the background is too bright or too dark. Even when using spot metering, a vastly different background can cause problems. Remember to use a positive + adjustment with strong bright backlighting and a negative - adjustment for a very dark background.



Finally, if you are undertaking the trip of a lifetime to some amazing destination full of wildlife or amazing birds don’t skimp on your gear. Grab that big zoom (easily under $2000 for the Sigma  or Tamron) and give yourself the best chance of bringing home fantastic images. Once you enjoy the reach of a long telephoto lens you’ll wonder how you ever got by without one.

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