The Importance Of Head Angle In Bird Photography

Birds are skittish by nature and that means that they are often quickly looking around to make sure that they aren't being surprised by some predator. As a result, many bird photographers get tired of waiting for the best head angle shot and they just fire away, thinking that getting the shot of the bird at all is good enough.

But here is a little secret of bird photography - if you want your bird images to look their best, you must pay attention to the head angle of each bird. The best and most pleasing head angles for bird photos are when the bird's head is facing 90 degrees away from you in portrait pose, or when he is looking straight at you, or anywhere in between those two positions.

Photos that have the bird's head facing away from you at any angle is usually not the best, unless it is telling a story and you can see what is getting his attention. This is because there is just something about the eyes that will either make or break a photo. And that is why the bird's eye needs to be the one thing that is in absolutely perfect focus.

Another common problem with many bird images is the butt shot. Because birds are in constant movement they will often be facing away from you. This makes for a completely uninteresting image in most cases. So resist the butt shot unless the head is turned 90 degrees from the camera and the eyes are clearly visible.

Of course, all photography rules will be broken at some point and still produce great images, but in general, these guidelines on how to shoot a bird's head angle will produce the most pleasing and attractive bird images for others to view.

Snowy egret in portrait pose

Cattle egret turned halfway toward the camera

Brown pelican largely facing the camera

Limpkin butt shot with face and eyes still visible

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Camera Settings When Shooting RAW Files

Digital cameras have so many settings and options, especially the higher-end cameras, that it can be overwhelming to try to learn them all and then put them into practice. But the good news is that if you shoot RAW files, you can cut down on the number of settings that you need to worry about and fuss over.

The reason for this is that when you are shooting RAW files, settings that involve exposure, contrast, color, saturation, sharpness, etc. can best be tweaked in post-processing. In fact, you will have much greater control over those settings in programs like Lightroom, Photoshop, Paintshop Pro, or whatever software you use for processing your RAW files, than you would by shooting JPEG images and using the camera settings instead.

Of course, most modern cameras give you the choice of shooting RAW files, JPEG files, or even a combination of the two. So you can make your own choice and there is nothing wrong with shooting JPEG files. A lot of people prefer to do that because they think it is much easier and faster to do so. But once you take the shot in JPEG format, the RAW file of information about that image is discarded forever by the camera. Thereafter, you are limited in the adjustments that can be made to the JPEG file itself in post-processing.

Instead, RAW files allow a wide range of adjustments to be made to the image because the camera has saved all of its relevant information about that image that it had captured when you pressed the shutter. So you have a lot more image data to work with and therefore much greater control over the final image as a result. You can then save the image as a JPEG file for sharing with others or printing and you still have the unaltered RAW file for that image if you want to reprocess it again at some point in the future.

And once you get used to opening and working on your files in a RAW converting and processing software program, you get pretty used to the settings and tweaks that are available to you quickly. It doesn't really have to take that much more time to process your images while the results will be so much better if you shoot RAW files and use the settings in your post-processing software instead of those in your camera.

So what should you do with your camera settings that are duplicated in RAW post-processing? Many photographers who shoot RAW files just set them at the most standard settings available in the camera and then leave them alone from there. By doing this, it helps the photographer focus more on the art of photography instead of technical settings while they are in the field. There will be plenty of less demanding opportunities for tweaking the images when you are back home and processing those great RAW images that you just took.

Photo Opportunities At Gatorland's Bird Rookery

When you mention Gatorland in Central FL pretty much everyone thinks only of alligators, and to be sure, there are plenty of them there and they are the star of the show.

But in the back of the park is an amazing bird rookery that offers incredible opportunities to get some great close-up shots of some of the most photogenic birds of Florida. The thing that makes such great close-ups possible is the boardwalk that goes right through the areas where the birds are nesting. So they are literally just a few feet away from you. You can get by with using a 300mm lens but I highly recommend 400mm or more if you have it.

The other great feature is that these birds are pretty much used to having humans stroll by and ogle them. They don't seem fazed by all the attention one little bit. As a result, you can get some very natural reactions, instead of obviously alarmed expressions.

In the spring and early summer, there are plenty of chances to get great shots of young ones all the way from hatchlings to adolescents. I understand that St. Augustine has an alligator farm that is very similar in having a bird rookery as well, but I haven't been there yet to be able to comment on it. But I can say with certainty that if you are a nature photographer who lives in Florida or if you are visiting the state anytime soon, Gatorland's rookery needs to be on your photo bucket list of places to visit.

Here are a few shots I have gotten at the Gatorland rookery in the last few months:

Snowy Egret nesting

Snowy Egret portrait

Cattle egret perched by its nest

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How To Remove Unwanted Objects In Photos In Photoshop

One of the most irritating things for a photographer is taking a beautiful picture only to realize later on in post-processing that there is an unwanted object in the shot that effectively ruins the image. Sometimes we are so focused on the overall image when the photo is taken that we just don't notice that something small is distracting attention away from the main subject of the photograph.

In any case, how do we handle this situation in post-processing? Actually, it's fairly easy in Photoshop. Here is an example:

In this image the blades of green grass are an unnecessary distraction from the beauty of the sleeping ducklings. So they just simply have to go!

First, I opened the JPG file in Photoshop and then selected the "Brush" tool from the toolbar on the left of the main editing screen. Then I clicked on the "Foreground/Background Color" tool farther down the list and set the foreground color to the area that surrounds the blade of grass. In this case it's the light yellow of the fuzz on each duckling.

With the color selected, I just brushed over the grass and made it disappear by applying the surrounding color. I did this with both ducklings. But just brushing on a matching color does not necessarily match the texture or pattern of the fuzz, so to blend in the texture I selected the "Spot Healing Brush" from the left side toolbar and made the brush large enough to more than cover the width of the grass blade that I brushed out. Then by working my way down the area where the grass was removed, this tool automatically brings in the texture and color of the surrounding area.

In some cases, I can just use the "Spot Healing Brush" all by itself on smaller unwanted objects and achieve very good results, but when there is a larger object that needs to disappear I find it best to brush it away first using a surrounding color and then use the "Spot Healing Brush" afterward as a finishing touch.

Here is the finished image after retouching:

Voila! No grass blades in the wrong places anymore. This technique is very simple and yet can help remove major unwanted objects from your photos. It takes a little practice but it can save some images that otherwise just wouldn't be good enough to show.

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Black Skimmer Rookery At Indian Shores

Black skimmers are unique birds. Just their appearance alone is eye-catching with their bright red beaks and legs contrasted against a black and white body. But they are especially unique when they go fishing. It's amazing to watch these birds skim along the water at a pretty good clip with that lower jaw submerged in the water skimming for whatever small fish can be found. And they are pretty good at what they do.

Just last week we visited the Suncoast Seabird Sanctuary in Indian Shores, FL as we do from time to time. By the way, this is a great place to support with donations as they do wonderful work with injured birds and waterfowl, helping them to heal and rehab. But as we walked out the back side of the sanctuary to the beach, I noticed that there were a lot of black skimmers in the area cruising the shallow water for food.

After looking around we noticed that there was an area on the beach a little farther north that was roped off and we quickly realized that this was where the black skimmers were laying their eggs. Of course, this makes a nature photographer very happy to have all of these great birds in one location, so I spent quite a bit of time there getting plenty of images into my camera.

Interestingly, after talking with some of the local folks we learned that the black skimmer colony in past years has been much larger than it is this year and nobody seems to know why. But for me, it was plenty big enough to get some great shots of the males strutting their stuff and the females protecting their eggs in the sand.

Here are some of the shots I got that day:

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The Most Important Element Of Bird Photography

Bird photography is challenging to say the least. Birds usually are constantly on the move and they rarely pose for you like you wish they would. Add to that the fact that you can't control outdoor lighting, only try to work along with it, and the fact that birds are often skittish and wary to begin with, and you can see why bird photography is not easy.

But that is also part of the allure. That's because it takes great amounts of patience, planning, knowledge of your subjects, and willingness to go wherever they are that translates into bird photography skills that produce great images. Of course, anyone can get run-of-the-mill, ordinary shots of birds. But if you want bird photos that really stir interest and are engaging, you need the skills to do be able to do that.

One of the most important factors to understand when photographing birds is that of all the elements of the image that will be important, and there are often many of these, by far the most important is the eyes of the bird. Truly great bird photographers recognize this and if you examine their work you will see clearly that the eyes get preferential treatment. They are almost always razor sharp even if other parts of the bird are slightly out of focus.

There is just something about our desire as beholders to look into the eyes of the bird and see it clearly. Again, this is going to take effort because birds don't stand still very often. Their head is usually a moving target that slips in and out of focus depending on which way they are looking. This means that you have to keep readjusting focus all the time to keep those eyes sharp.

For this, I like to use the spot focusing feature on my camera that lets me focus on a very small part of the image in the middle of the viewfinder. Once I place the eye in the center of the viewfinder, I lock the focus on the bird's eye by half-pressing the shutter and then recompose the image in whatever way that I want. This is fine as long as the bird stays in that general position. But when it moves or changes the direction it is facing, I have to go through that whole process again, often many times before everything is in place to press the shutter the rest of the way and take the shot. It's a lot of work, but very rewarding when done properly.

Here is an example of keeping the eye in sharp focus even if the beak or other parts of the bird are slightly out of focus:

What is the element of this photo that grabs your eye first?

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How To Start Post-Processing Your Digital Photos

Post-processing digital photos is intimidating to many amateur photographers. It seems very confusing at first and if you have a powerful program like Photoshop there are a ton of menu options that can appear to be overwhelming.

That being the case, the simple truth is that you need to learn how to do at least some basic post-processing of your digital images if you want them to look their best. Back in the heyday of film cameras, you seldom got the results you hoped to achieve when you picked up your roll after it was processed into prints. Even if the processing lab knew what look you were trying to achieve with your film images, extensive image adjustment was time intensive and therefore cost prohibitive. So we often got back prints that were bland in appearance with no real visual pop. Unfortunately some seem to think that is the way that digital photos should look now as well, but there is absolutely no reason in this digital age that you have to settle for the images that come unprocessed straight out of the camera.

Of course, one important decision to make is whether you intend to shoot RAW or JPG files. That is a whole other discussion to itself, but suffice it to say that if you shoot JPG files the camera will be doing some post-processing of its own and you may not need to make as much adjustment of each photo as you would with RAW files that have had no processing applied to them. However, even JPG files will need some adjustments at times and that is why you should have at least a working knowledge of the basics of post-processing. This will include being able to adjust exposure, contrast, clarity, noise, color saturation, use cropping, etc.

For these kind of adjustments, a behemoth like Photoshop may not be the best choice anyway. In fact, many photographers prefer the more streamlined approach found in Lightroom or similar products. So what do you do when you open a photo in Lightroom? Is there a standard procedure that you apply to every image? I know that it would be much simpler if that was the case, but the truth is that every photo is unique and and every scene that you capture is likewise very individual. So you need to have a working knowledge of the impact that each adjustment you make to the image will produce.

How do you get that kind of working knowledge? Well, watching some videos of others who can show you around Lightroom or similar programs is a good idea to get familiar with what adjustments can be made and what tools you will have at your disposal. There are plenty of these kind of educational videos available for free on YouTube. But if you really want to learn how to master image adjustments, you are going to have to get your hands dirty and just start using the program. The good news is that you will probably learn a lot very quickly and in short order will get some idea of general adjustments that you tend to favor in your style of photography. Most likely, it won't take long before you will be turning out much better images that have emotional and visual appeal.

As long as you save the changes you make as a different digital file from the one that came out of the camera, nothing you do to your photos is permanently harmful to that image. So feel free to slide the adjustments available to you in the post-processing program back and forth to see what effect they have on your images. Eventually you will develop a workflow with your images that is relatively quick and efficient. So if you aren't using a post-processing program, why not get started right away? You'll be glad you did and your photography results will improve by leaps and bounds.

Orange Gerbera Daisies

Above photo: Here is an example of a photo that was taken in strong sunlight and was very bland when I brought it into Lightroom. By bringing down the background shadows and punching up the color of the flowers and adding some contrast, the image was much improved over the file that came straight from my camera.

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www.duanelipham.com
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