For the last few days I've been trying to take pictures of birds in the wild. I thought it was going to be a walk in the park(literally it was) but taking pictures of birds is a lot harder than I thought it was going to be. As soon as I saw a bird somewhere where I thought I could get a good picture they had flown away before I could get the picture taken. I managed to get a few decent pictures but for every good picture that I took there was a lot more picture just taking up valuable megabytes of storage on my already creaking memory cards and hard drives. So after the last few days here are some of the things I found helped a lot.
1. Patience. Its worth noting that they are wild animals and will fly away at the first sign of anything out of the ordinary.
2. Zoom Zoom Zoom. I have a Tamron 70- 300mm lens and that has been my best friend over these last few days. Seeming as the bird have a habit of taking to the skies if you get too close make use of your zoom lens to keep as much distance between you and your subject.
3. Silence, I found that I was able to get better shots of the birds when I was walking along paths as I was able to move quieter when compared to the noise I made when crunching my way through the fallen leaves. As the birds are used to being hunted they will hear the rustling of leaves and usually mistake me for a some kind of big hairy cat as opposed to the gentle giant with a camera that I am.
4. Stop & Listen. Some of the best pictures I got were when I stopped moving altogether and listened for the birds, if they think they are safe they will start calling to each other and I found that was the easiest way to find them among the trees.
5. Test Shot. Take a test shot when you get to the park as the light levels change when moving through the trees from light to dark and I missed a few opportunities by not having the optimal settings on my camera.
Well these are few things that I found helped me while I was out taking pictures, Attached are some of the pictures that I managed to get. If you have any advice on how to get better pictures of birds(or any other form of wildlife) please share them as I'd love to hear them.
