Bird photography: capturing birds in flight

Welcome to the very first Wildlife Photo of the Week newsletter.

WHY? This weekly newsletter is designed to stoke the creative fires within you. I’ll be sharing a wildlife photo that I’ve captured and the story behind the image: why it matters to me, what emotions and thoughts were coursing through my brain at the time, and how I went about capturing it.

I'll also be showing you some of my less-than-stellar shots, the ones where I didn't quite hit the mark. 'Cause let's face it, we can all learn from our mistakes.

You see, I’m a firm believer that the best way to learn is by looking at real-life examples, and being completely upfront and honest about how the image was created.

Lets get into it…

Little Wattlebirds at Dusk

SETTINGS: 1/4000 sec shutter speed on a 500mm lens (150-600mm) with aperture and ISO in auto. Animal autofocus using tracking mode.

Why it’s important: The sense of FREEDOM is what this image means to me. I spent hours watching and photographing these acrobatic little birds hunting insects in this wild place - Myall Lakes National Park, surrounded by massive sand dunes, the ocean and large lakes.

The other feeling I get when looking at this image is that feeling of accomplishment. Challenging myself to photograph a bird in flight is one of the most difficult things I’ve done as a photographer, and when I finally captured an image that’s in-focus, has good composition and light I was very happy. Not an easy thing to do - which makes it totally worth it in my opinion!

I love the action captured in this image with one of the wattlebirds returning to it's perch and the interaction between both birds... almost like they're talking (shouting) to each other.

Also the light is beautiful, silhouetting the birds against that last light as the sun goes down - stunning!

STORY BEHIND THIS IMAGE:

Each month I create a masterclass and challenge for my photo community to teach and inspire photographers so that they go out and take action, capture their image and then post it inside Photo BootCamp Academy and get helpful feedback from me and other members.

I've been creating these classes for more than 5 years now, but this month is the most difficult challenge we've ever faced. It's all about bird photography. And if you've ever tried to photograph these fast, small and elusive creatures then you'll know how difficult it can be.

FAST BIRDS IN FLIGHT

I was camping at one of my favourite wild places - Myall Lakes National Park.

The backstory is that I often come up to this wild place to reconnect with nature, to come and see my pack of wild dingoes who I’ve been photographing for a number of years. To walk in nature get into the ocean and regain that energy I’ve lost. Sometimes modern society drains me with the non-stop information overload and the constant conflict. If you ever feel drained and have lost your mojo then I suggest you get back into nature, slow down and see what happens… works for me 😃 

For 3 evenings in a row, I walked up the sand dune near my campsite and tried to photograph these wattlebirds as they hunted for insects.

I find their aerial acrobatics very entertaining, sometimes they fly straight up and then turn and drop down to earth with an insect in their beak. And they are super-fast flyers which makes capturing them even more of a challenge.

Firstly I found a good spot on the dunes where I could shoot into the dusk light and sat down with my legs in front of me so that I could support my long lens with my left elbow on my knee.

Dialled in my settings - shutter priority mode using a very fast shutter speed of 1/4000 sec because flying birds are super-fast, using animal eye autofocus on my Canon R5 with a Sigma 150-600mm lens.

Then I observed the birds behaviour for a few minutes. I tried to spot a bird that was about to take off from its perch and then I’d quickly move my camera up to my eye, trying to track the bird as it flew.

I’m not an easy task because they take off and fly so fast, catch their prey and then return to the perch in about three seconds. Watching, waiting, anticipating and then shooting takes a lot of concentration and focus and I missed a lot of the time, probably about 70% of my images were either out of focus or the subject was not in the frame or the body language of the bird was not ideal. These are all throwaway images and with flying bird photography you get a lot of these.

BIG LESSON: I think the take away lesson here is that when you are photographing fast moving birds like these, the more images you take the more chance you’ll get of capturing something that is worthwhile. I am a big advocate for not over-shooting and thinking about your shot before taking it but in this case you’ll need to over-shoot knowing that most of your images will be throwaways.

I got lucky with this shot because the focus was perfect the body language of the two birds was interesting and I have plenty of frame around the birds to make for an interesting composition.

And this is the thumbnail that was used for my Bootcamp 55 Masterclass & Challenge.

What did I do in post? Once I had downloaded all my images into Lightroom, Classic I then ran through the pick and reject process making sure I picked the keepers and reject the throwaways. And then I filtered for flagged images to only look at my picked shots. This was when this particular image stood out to me because of the body language of the two wattle birds, the lighting and that beautiful silhouetted tree.

I then took that image into the Develop Module and tweaked a few things - see images below:

Stay inspired.

Brent

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You’re awesome!