Photographing Wildlife: Birds!

Have you ever tried to take a photo of brightly colored bird sitting on a branch, or a seagull as it floats on a wind current? How about a humming bird as it sips from feeder? Wildlife photography is one of the most daunting types of photography I have tried. It takes patience, and long hours of sitting, watching, and waiting... Once you have captured a successful image, it suddenly makes all that waiting worth while!

  Getting to know your wildlife a little bit will help in the success of your photography of these typically skiddish creatures. Birds like other some other animals will look for an easy meal and often frequent areas around trash cans, and picnic tables when their preferred meals aren't readily available, BUGS!

   I captured this Blue Jay while sitting down at a picnic table to download a few images at Silver Dollar City. He was particularly interested in my crackers as I munched one down. Sitting about eight feet away, he was content to watch and wait to see if I would leave him a morsel or two. All the time I needed to slowly pic up my camera and use manual focus, as not to frighten him away, and snap this photo. The image isn't an award winning aviary photo by any means, but I learned something that day, hang out around a food source and pic a spot where the lighting is conducive to highlight your subject. My next photo would be even better as I found this new subject matter enticing!

Street Photography

   One of my favorite down-time activities is street photography/people watching. The look and feel of a photo when we are doing everyday things to me is more real than the cheesy smile or wrinkled up nose of the person posing for a photo. There is a natural draw for me to the face we wear all the time instead of the one we possess when we know there is a camera pointing our direction. In short, street photography is about capturing life as it happens, unscripted.

   I was taking a break during a recent NYC trip where I was engaged in a series of street photographs when I saw this lady admiring her boots. Without a second hesitation, I raised my camera and took the shot. It wasn't until after I had downloaded the photograph that I noticed the reflection of the Times Square, lighted billboards in the glass. The composition was fantastic, and I couldn't have posed her any better if I had coached her. Street photography is as much about the moment as it is the surrounding, and this was a beautiful shot! This type of photography should always tell a story in as few images as possible. I got lucky with this shot, but I get better with every shoot as I learn from my successes and failures.


  

Auto-Focus or Manual Focus

   When you shoot your camera you probably use the user friendly settings of the auto, or green square on your settings dial. I know I did for a very long time after I bought my first digital camera. If you want your pictures to look professional and crisp, you may want to try a few simple tricks. Here's one; if you have a dslr camera, most commonly referred to as a camera with a removable lens, try turning the auto focus feature off and focusing manually!

High School Volleyball

The age of the photograph speaking for itself has gone. The new age consists of the photographer who able not only to capture a moment in time, but to write or say something compelling about that particular capture. The same rules of photography still apply  today, but what has changed? In a way this is a travesty in its own right. It seems that photography has lost the ability to trigger emotional responses in the viewers around the world, or has it?

When Life magazine began showing people the world outside of their own community with photo's across the country, and then the world, a new world view quickly emerged that w larger than the local community. Over time that feeling has been lost I believe due to the sheer amount of photography that exists today. So, are the photographs we see today less appealing than they were sixty or seventy years ago? I doubt that is the case at all, but rather the world is simply not as big as it once was, and our place in it is simply not as defined.

This new age of photography still speaks as loudly and as clearly as it did many years ago when I first discovered a world outside of my backyard. When I see a photograph I don't really care about the composition or the color. I look at every photo and try to see some kind of emotion. Our photography hasn't hasn't lost the ability to speak for itself, rather, we have lost the ability to see the emotions of others in a photograph.

The next time you look at a photograph try this experiment; Place yourself in the shoes of the person or thing and attempt to see through their eyes, stretch out your feelings and "feel" their fear, joy, amazement, or accomplishment, and take the time to "feel" what it must be like to be there, instead of in a classroom or safe in your home. Try to wear the perspective of the photographer and what it must have been like to be in his or her shoes, recording through the lens, a moment that they were a witness to.