Gotta tell you, I really enjoy photographing nature and wildlife. Bird photography is right up there with night sky photography on my list of favorites. How does one become better this endeavor? As they say, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice, practice and more practice. Here’s the results from a couple morning sessions in my neighborhood.

Major bird photography tip

Once thing I have found when going out to make images is to always have a goal. It doesn’t matter what your goal/target may be. Have one. In the past I used to go out with my camera thinking I’ll just photograph what I come across. Occasionally that would generate some nice images. Once I started with the goal idea I managed to get many more keepers. Even if I didn’t actually come home with the specific target. Goals can be anything from I’m going to look for a specific color, letter of the alphabet, leading lines or shape. Doesn’t matter. Not sure, but I believe having something in mind makes you look harder at everything.

Bluebirds

Bluebird lands in the treetop.

My goal this day was birds, specifically bluebirds. A very mild fall in our area led to lots of food being available for the birds. Usually, the bluebirds are already long gone at this time of year. That gave me a good reason to get out to see if I could get some new ones and make them my target.

Even though my ‘assignment’ for the day was bluebirds the cardinal came in as one of my favorites.

Other species

Because my primary focus was the bluebird, I tuned in to all avian life. I ended up seeing many different types of birds in places which I didn’t notice them. Bluejays, cardinals and house finches were among some of the wildlife on which I trained my camera. Turns out I even had a quick peek at a coyote racing through the underbrush.

Staying aware allowed me grab a quick couple of frames of this coyote running through the brush.
Backlight of this small bird was possible due to the long lens reach of the 150-600mm with a 1.4 Extender.

Avian behavior

A nice bird portrait can be a winner image. I generally prefer to catch and show action and behavior. This requires spending a lot of time just being observant. Noting if there is a slightly different movement just before taking flight. Or, how do the birds hide or jump around within the branches. The more you study the movements the better you can predict when to fire the shutter.

Felt a kind of oriental vibe with these two house finches and a bluebird gracing the treetops.

Gear

All bird photography were made with the OM System OM-1 (link is for the Mark II; Here’ the OM-1 used from MPB) with the 150-600mm M. Zukio ED f/5-6.3 lens. I added the 1.4 Telextender for a full frame field of view equivalent to 1680mm. There’s one other thing that has helped my image capture of birds going into flight. It’s the ability to photograph into the past. At least that’s what I call it. OM System cameras can record to a buffer without saving those photos until the shutter is fully pressed. Voila! What you just saw a second or two ago is recorded. It’s awesome and I’ll have another article on that shortly.

Yours in Creative Photography,

Bob