First Wildlife Post From a Newbie

[Mike Lewis]

So I have spent the great majority of my photographic energies shooting landscape images, but recently a friend of another photographer friend got going on Wildlife shooting, and so I have found myself out with the 2 of them dabbling in Wildlife imaging. It seems to be great fun, but also COMPLETELY different from landscape shooting obviously, not just due to subject but also in appropriate gear.

In any case, I am finding it to be challenging, but also rewarding if you can get a decent image. I have much to learn, and hope to start to be able to get lots of inspiration and some good guidance on the forum here.

So without further excuses ( ) here is my favorite capture so far, from a local pond only aboput 15 minutes from my house.

There was another photographer at the same pond, who was very accomplished, and also had some really amazing gear. He was quite nice, and shared some of his very impressive images, plus some good tips on the behavior of the ospreys in the area.

Comments welcome and helpful tips very welcome, and thanks for looking.

ML

 

[AlanLichty]

A rather nice start - I like the sharp focus on the hawk.

 

[Jeffrey]

Nice Osprey image, though the power pole isn't the best perch.

 

[JimFox]

Shooting wildlife and I think especially birds is a whole other cup of soup compared to shooting landscapes. We have a few guys here who are very accomplished at it and can hopefully give some tips. But I will say that this one looks pretty nice, so you must be on the right track.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Yes, the power pole is hardly a natural looking environment, but that was the only place to be able to get close enough (even with a 150-600 zoom) to get some good detail. Hoping for something a little less man-made the next time out for sure.

Thanks so much for the comments,

ML

 

[Mike Lewis]

A rather nice start - I like the sharp focus on the hawk.

Alan,

thanks for commenting, and the nice reply,

ML

 

[Jim Dockery]

Good work on the bird, and a good start at a difficult area of photography. It is very enjoyable to just get out there and observe the animals, but hard to avoid disturbing them. I've been dabbling in it myself for the last couple years with mixed results (and I've been into photography for about 50 years). I got a Tamron 150-600mm for my Sony A7rII and got a few good ones, but the focus system was too slow, and manual focus too touchy for me. I just switched to the Sony 100-400mm with 1.4x and have been very happy with it. This type of photography seems to be very gear dependent ($$$) if you want to do pro level work.

 

[Tom in Arizona]

Hi Mike...

Welcome to the wonderful world of bird photography. You're off to a great start with this one...sharp focus, good exposure and processing. Here are a few suggestions I've learned that may help you become more addicted to this area of photography.

• Try to shoot early morning or late afternoon when possible. The light at those times is much kinder to highlighting a bird's eyes and feathers.
• Focus on the eyes and try to grab a pose which features a catch light in the bird's eye.
• As mentioned above, the perch and background are probably the most difficult aspect. Try to find a "clean" background such as you did in your photograph that clearly shows the bird. Birds obviously don't cooperate with where they land, so finding a good perch and background is frequently tough.
• If you find yourself frustrated with trying to photograph birds "in the wild", try setting up a bird feeder in your yard or nearby park when available. The birds are not usually as exotic as an Osprey, but you can control the environment by where you place the feeder to provide you with the best light, perch and background. You'd be amazed at how gratified you'll be when you catch a Goldfinch, Sparrow or other smaller bird in good light on a good perch with a clean background. If nothing else, it will provide you with some wonderful opportunities to improve your craft before stalking the more glamorous Hawks, Eagles, Ospreys etc.
• As you've probably already learned in your landscape and astrophotography endeavors, patience is always the most critical factor to getting a great photograph.

Keep shooting and enjoy the birds.
Tom

 

[Ben Egbert]

Nice for a beginner. Telephone poles are a great place to practice Hawks and osprey. Also be ready to capture them when they leave, a good chance for a bird in flight shot with no phone lines.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Thanks everyone for the informative and supportive replies! Lots of good suggestions from very skilled and knowledgeable folks - just what I was hoping for!

ML

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Tom, who is an excellent bird photographer, has given you some excellent tips. When shooting always think about backgrounds. The one fortunate thing about long telephoto lenses is that the depth of field is shortened considerably leading to a nice bokeh beyond the objects you are focusing upon.

There are also things you can do with the background to remove unwanted objects. You can always clone out obtrusive objects or can blur the background if it is too busy and thus competing with your subject. I use field blur to soften backgrounds when necessary. Use the content select tool to select the background you want to blur and then select field blur from the filter menu and move the slider to the right as much as you want to blur. Here is an example:

Before processing

After processing and cropping

 

[Tom in Arizona]

Hi Douglas...

Masterful work on your post processing skills!

Tom

 

[Ben Egbert]

Doug, this is a fantastic mask job. The branches in front of the bird and the ones touching the beak are well done. I would have ended up with divots in the beak.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Hi Douglas...

Masterful work on your post processing skills!

Tom

Thank you, Tom. I really appreciate it when an excellent photographer like you compliments what I have done.

 

[Douglas Sherman]

Doug, this is a fantastic mask job. The branches in front of the bird and the ones touching the beak are well done. I would have ended up with divots in the beak.

Been there, done that, Ben. I sometimes spend hours fixing these types of images going from the first select to inverse and back again several times trying to get it right.

 

[Mike Lewis]

Well this post continues to be very informative! Yes, I meant to single out the excellent post from Tom with such a great set of tips no doubt learned learned through so much experience and then so generously passed on - much appreciated. And thank you to Douglas as well for the excellent show and tell on post processing. My skills in Photoshop are still a bit rudimentary, as I pretty much use Lightroom for most of my processing flow. But the example above is very enlightening, and does make me want to get into PS CC and try to sharpen up some of those skills a bit more for sure.

When I first joined Focal World I was impressed with how friendly, helpful, and generally welcoming the folks on the landscape forum were. Now I see those traits are not limited to just the landscape forum !