I take a lot of pleasure in bird photography, and I am very aware of the challenges it presents. These challenges fall into 4 areas: character of the subjects, accessibility, skill and equipment. How is this different from any area of photography? Well, from the point of view of equipment, bird photography actually is a lot more difficult with “standard” equipment. Not that good bird photos can’t be taken with any camera, but specialising in birds demands something extra. This is true to a much greater extent than say, landscape, children, sports or even in the era of digital imaging, macro.
Equipment - The high powered zoom lenses and amazing close-up capacity of digital compacts far exceeds anything I had available for most of my photographic career. They would have made my progress as a photographer much more rapid, but once the larger and more human-adapted birds were all “captured” they wouldn’t have done much for my bird portfolio.
I just spent a weekend with a fellow enthusiast who took along a digital camera with a fast (f2.8, image stabilised 12x zoom lens. Her tally 2 acceptable photos (both gulls) to my 50 assorted gulls, terns, pelicans, wrens. The difference? The compact was too slow to grab focus, the viewfinder too dark, the camera just not designed for the task.
Skill - Skill relates to knowledge and practice. Knowledge you can get here: practice requires some degree of success to fuel it, so having appropriate equipment is important to practice. I am going to suggest some (inexpensive) gear that will improve your success rate, but getting out to use it is the main thing.
Accessibility - Birds might be everywhere but you can’t be! Nor can I, and of course, the kind of birds I want to photograph are always the exotic ones. Zoos and major bird collections are a favourite source to learn about and photograph these birds, but it is not such an easy matter to get satisfying pictures of any small, fast moving creature in caged environments. Many people may also feel it is cheating, somehow. We’ll look at the techniques a little later.
Field trips are much more interesting and, of course, expensive; time is an issue, and the chance of getting the wildlife to cooperative, chancy!
“Field trip” conjures up pictures of car drives, hikes, safaris and the like: but your local park or a short trip away from your own locality can be very worthwhile. The range of birds actually inhabiting your locality may surprise you, especially when you look into the migratory patterns of birds in your area. Some research online or at your local library, and contact with a nearby zoo and bird fanciers’ club may suddenly increase the “availability” of birds around you... knowledge is a powerful tool!
Character of the Subjects - Now a little reality check. It is a nonsense to talk about bird photography as if there was some uniformity about it. Your approach to an ostrich in the wild has little in common with photographing blue wrens in a garden, or warblers in a forest, or eagles nesting in the mountains. You can’t treat bird photography as a homogeneous set of principles or think that, because they all have wings, they must all have the same habits and attitudes to the camera!
Are there any common traits at all? There are many behaviours that can be anticipated. All birds preen their feathers, and preening birds will often perform wing and leg stretches, followed by a huge yawn. They generally raise their young in a constrained area (or, like cuckoos, organise a surrogate!) and an adult will usually be nearby to feed and protect them. Once they leave the nest, they usually stay together in a family group for at least a short while (some for years).
Resting birds will frequently yawn; birds of prey often defecate just before taking flight, and all birds eat, perform courtship rituals, and tend to defend a territory. Of course, even these common threads have exceptions, but by thinking about the way these relatively common behaviours relates to location and season, it is possible to plan bird photography with some idea of what your subjects might offer you and be prepared for the most likely opportunities.
Local conditions will often dictate your ability to successfully photograph a bird. An unapproachable bird in one area may be ridiculously tame in another region, and local geography and weather patterns are important. Just this week I was observing seabirds hovering briefly before dropping to land. I also watched a group of photographers desperately trying to catch them on the wing, whipping cameras up to their eyes as each birds came into sight. They should have been observing the terrain: a few minutes was enough to show that the birds were all coming in from the sea, allowing the small hill that hid them from the photographers until the last minute, to lift them just high up to overshoot their landing area and drop down. Moving into the best place relative to the light, dropping down low, and pre-focussing on the hill, produced shot after easy shot.
Approaching Birds - Birds are typically unconcerned about people. Unless you are feeding them, no matter how much you blunder about, they are more likely to ignore than avoid you. That might sound contrary to most advice you will have heard about stalking your intended subject, using hides, keeping quiet... my experience has been, whether with domestic fowl, city-living birds like pigeons and sparrows, wild parrots, hawks, wild kookaburras, wrens, honeyeaters or wild emu, there are just two limiting factors to approaching them: their comfort zone at the time, and the territory they are occupying.
Even people have "comfort zones", and they vary from one person to another and according to the situation. Your comfort zone is much smaller at a party than it is when you are at work; it just about evaporates when you get in a crowded train! Birds likewise.
Like you, a bird reacts with some restlessness to a minor violation, and just reinstates the “correct” distance. You should study your subjects’ behaviour and learn to assess the changes that tell you you are pressing too close.
As you encroach upon its “discomfort” zone, the bird's behaviour alters: if it can move off, it will; if not (say it has babies to protect) it will begin to act in a stressed manner. It may stop feeding, preening, or perhaps sound alarm calls.
When a bird stops what it is doing, stands upright, hunkers down or suddenly freezes, stop and wait until it resumes it's previous activity. Once it does, wait a few minutes before attempting to approach further. Let them enter your territory and that comfort zone stops being an issue, too. Despite traditional wisdom. birds seldom see humans as prey animals unless they move suddenly, make sudden, load noises or act as though they are intent on stalking them.
Having seen a potential subject, I make it a point not to stop suddenly or creep up and not to stop talking in a natural voice. My targets rarely turn a feather as I stroll to within shooting distance.
Remember that most birds are very active by nature. They will move on quickly whether you are intent on taking their portraits or not! It is very easy to believe that you have frightened them off, but that is seldom the case. In fact, many birds will return again and again to the same branch you “frightened” them away from while you are still there, if you wait long enough. One way to increase the number of successful pictures from a trip, is to spend some time watching to see which birds return most often to which shrub and how frequently. With that established and an idea of how close they will let you approach (experiment), it becomes entirely possible to set up a tripod and settle back to enjoy the show.
This does not apply in quite the same way to nest shots. The territorial imperative is much stronger where eggs and nestlings are concerned. Yes, observe from a reasonable distance, but once you know when the nest is likely to be unattended, set up quickly and move well away. Here is the place for a remote control or a hide.
Actually, the presence of chicks is both an advantage and a problem. Birds are relatively passive towards people until they are nesting - then beware! Seagulls will swoop at your head and they know to come straight out of the sun! Spurwings (masked plovers) make fearless low-level, head-high attacks on anyone within 200 metres of their nests or young, and many a person has returned home bloodied by an encounter with a pair of territorial Australian magpies, just from walking down the wrong street in springtime. It is a moral imperative that our photography should not distress the birds, and there are some birds which should not be approached and this should be respected. It would be nice if they took the same care with us! Still, in the difficult position of trying to escape unscathed, it is at least possible to get some good pictures. Put your camera on burst mode, AI focus and add 1 or 2 stops of exposure compensation!
Some general advice you will often read, and which you may at least consider if you are having problems getting within range:
- avoid direct eye to eye contact. In the wild, this usually signifies aggression and birds will assume you are a predator;
- only look at the bird intermittently to observe it's position and activities;
- approach your subject indirectly and gradually close the distance;
- use cover to obscure your movements: put trees or poles directly in the line of site of your approach
Last Words on Equipment and Technique - Although getting close enough to fill the frame is most people’s concern, try not to crop too tightly or place the bird too close to the edge of the frame. Leave room to give some context and try not to cut off legs and tips of wings.
As a rule, you will do better with a higher shutter speed to freeze the action. This may necessitate faster film or higher ISO settings. 400 ISO is probably the minimum for general bird photography. A fast motor drive will help you to capture the peak of the action, but anything less than 3 frames per second is going to be more frustrating than helpful. If your shutter isn’t at least that quick, you will do better with single shot and good anticipation.
It is a good idea to double check camera settings, adjust exposure if necessary, and of course, make sure the lens cap is off before you get to your site! Change your card or put in a new roll of film well before you get close.
Flash is handy. Even if it is too far away to illuminate the bird, it is often enough to put a spark in its eye. In heavily wooded areas, a powerful flash may be a shotsaver, It needs to be set to a telephoto setting, and although most don’t go beyond the illumination required for an 80mm or 90mm lens, with a high ISO they can add a useful burst of light for even a 300mm lens. Flash will occasionally startle skittish subjects but is always worth trying if light is a problem; and the bird won’t fly until after it goes off, anyway!
On the subject of lenses, longer is better, and faster is better than slower. I find that a zoom in the 70-200 mm is both flexible and light enough to be useful, and generally able to focus close enough for smaller birds. Such lenses are usually acceptably fast (about f4) and nor will they break the bank. Despite this advice, most of my birds are shot with a 28-300mm lens on a DSLR, making it effectively 45-480mm. At a maximum f5.6 it is slower than I would like, but I have had great success with it. I carry a faster 180mm f2.8 but find I rely on the longer lens more.
Tripods are highly recommended and a cable or other remote release will add real value to the pod. Make sure it is stable enough to do the job - match it to the camera/lens combination you are going to use, and get a decent head(see my Intel on tripods). If you insist on not using one, use a monopod instead; you will not regret it.
Lastly, invest in a decent bag. One that will hold all your equipment, keep it dry, and be comfortable to carry! It should also have room for food, drinks and a change of clothing if you are out in the open. that is not a small ask, and you should pay as much attention to the bag as to any other piece of photographic equipment you own,
I’m sure there is more I could add, but if there isn’t enough here to get you out and “shooting birds” then the extra wouldn’t help anyway! Good luck.
