morris
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| p.1 #1 · p.1 #1 · How to take effective birds in flight photos | |
Photographing birds in flight is challenging and that's one of the things that makes it fun for me. If you are walking along and see a bird in the sky and point your camera up at it and take the photo you are likely to get a photo of a bird surrounded by empty sky. It will stand out and the subject will be clear yet for this photo to be more than ordinary the lighting must be sweet and/or the subject be special. A raptor will be more impressive than a gull. You know when you are doing things correctly when you make the more ordinary subject look great yet how do you do this?
Most of my flight photos are planned. I chose the time of day I'm shooting for the light and activity level of my subjects. I go to a place where lots of birds fly and then I look for a great background and setup my tripod using a gimbal mount to support my lens with camera attached. In this example I'm standing on an earthen dam on the West Pond Trail of Jamaica Bay National Wildlife Refuge here in New York City. The spot I'm standing is known by the local photographers as "The Runway" because it's a spot the birds frequently fly in and out of the pond due to wind direction. What is also great is the view of the pond and woods and the angle the small amount of elevation creates allowing me to get a view as if I'm another bird.
I've put you in the place as you can see the forest, the marsh, the pond yet the bird is clearly the subject. There are lots of compositional elements at play including sharp subject with blurred background, leading lines, rule of thirds, and providing space for the subject to move into. The photo is taken with nice warm and soft light. I warmed the image a bit more in post.
In this next example the canada goose fills more of the frame yet the environment is still a big part of the frame.
The subject is bright from the nice warm light making it stand out. I took a burst at 40 FPS providing a large selection of frames to choose from. I chose this frame for the subject's wing position as you can see it's working to climb. I also like the leading line and the fact that the bird is in the clear with some foliage around it. The goose is looking at me and this makes the photo more engaging. I've darkened a few bright trees in the background.
Last I fill the frame with my subject.
I've left a little room for the subject to move into and it's on a nice diagonal. There is lovely soft pink/lavender light created by clouds just after sunset. The pond is out of focus creating more than an empty background yet still a very clean one lacking distractions. The birds eye is clearly visible and I helped this by making it slightly brighter. This is a better way than painting a bright spot in as it's natural. A lot of people will tell you to use very fast shutter speeds for birds in flight as it makes it easier to get a sharp photo. You can get a nice sharp photo if you have a good pan and while you can do this hand held, I like to use a tripod and learning to walk around your tripod with a cross step is a skill of it's own. My faverate shutter speed for birds in flight is 1/125 yet there will be more cases where your pan was not good enough. Even at 1/500, some wing blur will be present helping show the movement of the birds. If you are beginning, please use the faster shutter speeds of 1/1000 and up while you master your pan and practice getting your subject in frame and well composed. With practice you will get more images you can be proud of.
Morris
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