You don’t have to be serious about wildlife photography to enjoy capture eye-catching images of our feathered friends. These colorful subjects abound all year long, and are easy to find at a local park, nearby nature center, and even in the comfort of your own backyard.
If you’re new to the game or want to give the genre a try, this quick tutorial from the popular Trav in the Bush YouTube channel will shortcut your learning curve in less than eight minutes by identifying five common beginner mistakes and the simple solutions for fixing them in a hurry.
Instructor Trav is a successful bird photographer based in British Columbia whose impressive imagery will quickly convince you to heed his expert advice. Overcropping is at the top of his list. As he says, “You may want that classic bird-on-a-stick look, but you’re too far away and think you can just get away with cropping in on the image.”
The drawback of this approach, according to Trav, is that that the more you crop in on a shot the more you sacrifice detail and image quality (in favor of grain, noise, and other unwanted image-killing attributes). The obvious solution is to use a longer lens or move physically closer to the subject. Unfortunately, there are times when neither is possible, but Trav demonstrates a couple of other effective options to try.
Mistake #2 is using a shutter speed that’s too slow for the task at hand when your goal is maximum sharpness. Trav takes a look at an old rule of thumb that says slowest safe shutter speed is the reciprocal of the focal length in use; namely, 1/600 with a 600mm telephoto.
This rule however, predates the multi-stop benefits of modern image-stabilization technology which must be factored into the equation. Trav also insists that there’s no such thing as a stationary bird (even if it’s perched on a limb rather flying across the sky) because it’s actually moving and twitching all the time—especially in windy conditions that ruffle feathers and make images appear acceptably soft.
The foregoing is barely a taste of the simple techniques that Trav describes, which include dealing with busy backgrounds, solving the challenges of bright midday light, and picking the best autofocus mode for different types of scenes.
The Trav in the Bush YouTube channel is full of more how-to videos for aspiring bird photographers of all skill levels.
There’s always a chance of contaminating you gear when shooting in the field, so don’t miss a recent tutorial we featured with another accomplished pro who demonstrates a safe-and-easy method for cleaning you’re camera’s dusty sensor, with his best practices for keeping it pristine as long as possible.