Photographing Birds In Action: Incredible DIY Tips For Beginners

The texture and color of birds’ plumage make them an exciting photographing subject, made all the more exhilarating by their elusive and fleeting nature.

With a lot of practice and patience, you will soon be on your way to capturing wonderful photographs of our feathered friends. These tips can help.

Photography Equipment

To capture birds in motion, the most important thing that you will need is a lens with an exceptionally high focal length.

The longer it is, the better it will be for magnification.

Source- Wiki

Don’t forget that lenses with high focal length can get noticeably heavy for movement. So if you are hiking up a hill, it might not be too convenient to carry a telephoto lens; particularly one coming with over ten pounds in weight.

Our recommendation would be to go for 70-300mm zoom lens. This is because they are versatile and fairly lightweight in comparison to the other giants lying within the same bracket.

Your Camera Settings

• Focus

How you would like to focus on your subjects will depend entirely on your approach and your photography equipment.

Some lenses autofocus faster and more accurately than others. So a little bit of experimentation’s needed to determine how quickly the motor of your autofocus moves.

Since birds are moving subjects; you should change your autofocus to the “continuous focus” mode (AKA Al Servo or AF-C). However, you’ll see yourself getting better results if you learn to focus manually.

• Exposure

When photographing birds, using a fast shutter speed and a shutter priority mode will make sure you are ready for the action even when the bird’s standing still at the very moment.

You never know when it’s going to take flight. So you would definitely want to prepare yourself in case it happens.

You should also use a wide aperture like f/4 or f/2.8 to give your audience the perspective of a shallow depth of field. This will help in isolating the bird from its background focusing more on its color and shape.

Shooting Tips

1. Bird photography is much more than the camera and lens

A great bird photograph depends on several factors including the likes of:

• Composition,

• Direction and quality of light,

• Background,

• Knowledge of the bird and its activities,

• Proper exposure and settings,

• The position of the photographer, and

• The 4 Ps – Perseverance, patience, practice, and passion.

While it is true that the longer the lens, the easier it becomes to capture bird photographs, particularly the ones that are frisky; but at the same time, it’s also true that the lens in itself cannot make a great bird photograph; the photographer does.

1. Composition and Light

Photography is all about light. It can either make or break a picture.

Early morning or late afternoon is typically the best time for bird photography, especially because the light during these times is soft.

The benefits of soft light are:

• It doesn’t cast harsh shadows on the subject.

• It brings out the glow in the bird.

• It helps in giving the catch light in the bird’s eye.

1. It’s all there in the eye

Look at your favorite bird photographs. What’s the first thing you see? The eye; right?

Humans have a natural tendency to make eye connections with any living organism. It’s no different in the case of birds. If there’s no light in their eyes, they will look dull or lifeless.

So try to capture bird photographs with catch light in their eyes. It will make them look more lively.

1. Fill up the entire frame

While photographing individual birds, it’s an excellent idea to fill up the entire frame.

The benefits of this practice include:

• It becomes easy for your audience to focus solely on the bird.

• It becomes easy on the photographer’s end to achieve a blur in the background.

• It’s easy to properly focus on the bird.

• It’s easy to compose in the field.

So that more or less sums things up. We hope the tips and tricks mentioned above come in handy for your photo shoot. Here’s a final toast to your success!