Break out the short lenses, it’s time for bird photography!

Wait, did I really write that?

I’m a bird photographer (when I grow up and get really good I’ll be an avian photographer) and I’m usually lugging around a 600mm with a big old tripod and gimbal head. Of course, I’ll get comments such as, “What magazine do you work for?” Or, “That sure is a big camera!”

The comment I get most from photographers is,“I’d love to be a bird photographer, but I just don’t have a long lens to use!” Don’t sell yourself short.

Not all bird photographs are close up portraits of our feathered friends on a perch. You can make stunning avian images with your short lenses, even your wide angle. I like to call them “birdscapes”.

Like shooting most small macro critters, you have to move in slowly, and the frogs will usually blend in well with their surroundings, so you have to really study the ground so you can spot them as far in advance as you can. Here is a Wood Frog on the side of a mossy tree trunk.

 

Purple Finch on the branch of a Spruce Tree - Canon 5D Mark II, Canon 500mm F4L IS, Canon 1.4x & 2.0x Extender II, @1400mm - Gitzo 3541XLS with Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal Head

Sitting in my living room, I suddenly heard an extremely enjoyable and melodious tone from outside. Hearing it repeated a few times over about 15 minutes was finally enough to lift my sorry carcass off of the couch and out onto the back patio. I discovered a male Purple Finch (he of the melodious tunes) along with a female partner going about the process of building a nest in the Spruce Tree just outside of the back door of my home.

I ran to get my tripod (a Gitzo 3541XLS with a Jobu Design BWG-Pro Gimbal head attached) and set it up with my Canon 500mm F4L IS lens attached along with the 1.4x Extender II that is pretty much welded to the lens. I say welded because if you do much wildlife photography at all you know that there is rarely such a thing as too big of a lens.

I took some shots of the joyful little singer but discovered that (and as is often the case with the little song birds) that he just wasn’t filling the view finder the way I wanted. And with that 1.4x teleconverter attached to the 500mm lens I was already shooting at the maximum minimum aperture for my 5D Mark II, F5.6; assuming I wanted to use autofocus. I have a 2.0x teleconverter too and thought briefly about just throwing that on and making the best of things with manual focus.

The eggs in the flower box

I’ve lived in Chicago for nearly 11 years now and I’ve come to appreciate the little surprises the city has to offer this small town boy. But, last week things took me by surprise.

I wasn’t thrown off by the $4.75 a gallon gas at the local gas station last week. Nor was I surprised when I was in downtown Chicago visiting with my sister and her Girl Scout troop when 3,000+ NUDE cyclists rode down Michigan Avenue protesting the use of fossil fuels. Sure, that one took me wee bit longer to explain to my daughter than the $4.75 gas. But nude people and high gas seem like a normal day here in Chicago.

Instead, what took me by surprise was when I went to water our flower boxes on the back deck and found our poppies had been torn out and replaced with four jumbo sized eggs!

We left the nest alone over the weekend the culprit finally made herself known…a female Mallard duck. I’ve seen a lot in the city but I have yet to deal with this — especially on my watch!

The culprit — a female Mallard duck

You'll want to go, or go back, after watching this video. Thanks Andy!

Check out all the models of the Kwik Camo in the store here: Kwik Camo

Chipping Sparrow perched on a branch

Learning wildlife photography – Making sharper images – Part 3 – In this final installment on making sharper images, we’ll discuss a few more things to think about when you’re trying to make the sharpest possible images.

Shutter Speed – You need enough shutter speed to have a reasonable chance at making a sharp image. The general rule of thumb is that your shutter speed should match the focal length you’re shooting at. E.g. For an image made at 220mm you should be shooting at a minimum of 1/200th of a second. With an image stabilized camera or lens, you can generally get away with a shutter speed that’s a couple of stops slower (1/50th of a second in this example).

• If your subject is moving around, you need enough shutter speed to freeze the motion. In most situations, you probably need shutter speeds of 1/250th of a second or faster to freeze the motion.
• One of the big advantages of digital photography is that you have the option of boosting your camera’s ISO setting in order to achieve a higher shutter speed. Of course the trade off with the higher ISO settings is increased noise in the images.

Camera Support – Many photographers are not accustomed to making images with the aid of a tripod. They find them cumbersome to use but instead enjoy the flexibility that hand-holding their camera gives them. However, I am a strong advocate for using a tripod whenever it is practical. Even with today’s advanced image stabilization system and cameras capable of reasonable images at high ISO settings, it is still generally advisable to use a tripod to enhance your image quality.

Female Purple Finch perched on a branch

Making sharper images – Part 2 - In the previous psot I discussed some of the finer points of using your camera’s auto focusing features to help compose an image and get what’s important (the eyes!) in focus. Let’s look at some additional factors that go into making sharp images.

Lenses – The higher quality the lens, the better images it can produce. And unfortunately, higher quality almost always translates to higher cost. Most camera and lens manufacturers make a line of “professional” lenses. In addition to the higher price for the “professional” quality, the lenses can produce tack-sharp, well saturated images. Spend enough time on Internet camera forums and you’ll come across a bevy of people constantly chasing the latest and greatest body. There are even some individuals who flip-flop back and forth between brands constantly chasing the newest camera body with the best perceived specifications. I’ve always advocated investing in the glass and then purchasing the best camera body you can afford. And I don’t know if I’ll ever understand people who switch back-and-forth between brands. I sincerely doubt it makes them better photographers and I know I couldn’t afford to take the hit on selling all my gear every couple of years only to stock up on gear for another brand.

Wilson's Phalarope swimming on a marsh - 1000mm, AI-Focus

Making sharper images – Part 1 – A lot of wildlife photography is dependent on the use of telephoto,telephoto-zooms and super telephoto lenses to make reasonable images of small subjects or larger animals off in the distance. When you use a telephoto lens, you need a new set of techniques in order to ensure that you end up with sharp images. Nothing is more frustrating than coming across some desirable subject, actually getting them into your viewfinder only to get home and discover that the images are lacking in the sharpness department.

The first thing to focus on (pun intended or not, you decide) is the subject’s eyes. In nearly all cases, the eyes of your subject should be tack sharp. So, that means that your going to have to put your camera’s focus point onto the animal’s eyes. Or, you can either exclusively use the center focus point and just accept the fact that your going to be spending a lot of time in Lightroom or Photoshop cropping your images to create a usable composition, or you can learn to use your camera’s features to create that composition in the viewfinder.

If the camera/lens combination you’re using allows it, learn to move the focus point around the available areas. Most of the consumer digital SLR cameras and many of the point-and-shoot cameras allow you to select from a number of different focus points. The trick is to practice selecting the currently active focus point until you can do it quickly, efficiently and without thinking. When I was getting serious about wildlife photography, I’d watch television through the viewfinder of my camera. I’d put on a lens that would allow me to have just the television in the viewfinder and then I’d move the focus point to the person who was currently speaking. It took a couple of weeks of practice but I finally got to the point where I could quickly perform the finger gymnastics necessary to instruct my camera where to move the focus point to. Practicing while you’re otherwise relaxing is a great way to learn a new skill so you’ll be ready when that cute little critter pops up while you’re in the field.

Here is a series of pictures I made a few years ago. The pictures show the main stages of a monarch caterpillar turning into a beautiful butterfly. This group of pictures was made over about a two week period. All of the action takes place at the beginning and end of that two week period. Near the end you can tell when the butterfly is about to emerge because just before the hatch the chrysalis becomes transparent allowing you to see the butterfly inside.

I came home early one afternoon and found a transparent chrysalis, I knew that the butterfly was just about to emerge. So I got my gear ready and kept a close eye on things. As the day went on I could see the butterfly moving inside struggling to break free. About ten o'clock that evening I had myself completely convinced that it was going to happen very soon. At midnight, (twelve hours in now), I'm quite certain that the chrysalis is just about to burst. By three in the morning I'm seriously considering using a razor blade to perform an emergency butterflyectomy. Well, five am comes and I certainly can't go to bed, I had already spent fifteen hours waiting for this thing! I could not imagine going to sleep and missing it at this point!  The clock on the mantle announces eight in the morning, and still no butterfly, OK this is just getting ridiculous!  In the end the butterfly you see here was 'born' at 11:00 AM on a beautiful July morning, after I had spent just over 23 hours on stakeout!

I can tell you that I took a much deserved nap that afternoon.

A few years back I had the privilege of spending some real quality time with a Sandhill Crane family. I have photographed cranes on the nest on several different occasions but this situation was about as good as I could imagine. The nest was located in Kensington Metro Park (a park very close to my home). The nest was very near the Nature Center so the birds were extremely acclimated to the presence of people. This was a good thing because at times there were more than a half a dozen people enjoying the experience. Over the course of about a month I spent dozens of hours photographing this incredible situation.

I found the nest early on and was able to photograph the adults as they incubated and turned the eggs. The incubation period for Sandhills is about 30 days, during that time one of the parents was with the eggs at all times.

There are many different types of safari vehicles in Africa, and this is the first in a series of videos to try and explain what the vehicles are like. This video specifically describes what the pop-top, or open-roof vehicles are like in east Africa. There are other vehicle types in east Africa (Tanzania and Kenya), however this video specifically addresses the open roof type. I'll shoot similar videos in Botswana and in Kenya later on this year, and my goal is to use these videos to visually explain what the vehicles are like before travelers get to Africa.

You can find the Kinesis Safari Sack described in this video in the OPG Store here.