A Day for the Birds
Birds make for a very interesting and very challenging subject for photography. Their size and distance from the photographer requires a large zoom and some careful focus. Their speed and the fact that they like to hide behind branches makes it really hard to capture on film. The other day I was out at Ute Park and I saw several birds and took on the challenge of trying to capture clear pictures of them.
Manually focusing a camera can be a very big challenge (at least to me it is). When something is moving quickly across your viewfinder there is very little time to concentrate on focusing and composition. It’s more of a matter of aim for what you want a photo of and then start shooting.
One thing that might help is the use of AI focus, which I have yet to expirament with. AI Focus is when the camera tries to continously focus on the subject. I imagine I will still run into the same problem I have with auto focus, in that it will focus on the wrong thing, but if a bird is moving hopefully the camera would pick up on it easier.
Practicing more with manual mode will help as well, and since that is one item on my New Year’s Resolution list, I should try to practice with it a lot more.
Despite the issues with out of focus images, I did manage to get some good ones. I took almost 200 photos of birds this day to try and get images of birds with their wings spread while in flight or in the trees.
I find images of birds with their wings spread to be more interesting to look at than a bird that is just sitting there. When a birds wings are spread it shows off a lot more of its detail and beauty. I think I captured that as best as I could.
This photo was extremely hard to get. It was in focus before the bird took off and I had to move quickly to try and capture it before it disappeared behind the trees completely. Even though it is blurry you can clearly see the black and white pattern on its back as well as the deep black color of its neck and head.
These little birds were all over the place, mainly under the bushes digging for food. Because of the amount of brush it was hiding under capturing this photo was hard to take due to the lack of light in that area. I had to use manual focus on this picture but because the bird stayed fairly still I was able to manually focus it and get a really sharp photo. It is amazing how much these birds blend in with its surroundings. I had to spend a few seconds looking for the birds after I heard them in the bushes next to me.
Finally I captured this image of a bird gliding through the air. The focus came out pretty well but when I tried to crop it to make the bird larger it looked really bad. I’m surprised I was able to capture this photo as the bird flew right overhead.
Birds have been my toughest subject from the beginning, but I am not giving up on getting consistant, decent photos. Do you know of any tips to help me? What do you think of these photos? Please leave a comment below.
