JonBeard.com

When you think of a wildlife photographer you’ll often imagine a person laying on the ground shooting from hundreds of feet away with equipment that’s both the size and cost of your house. Well, that may be what it takes for a lot of shots, but getting close up with the birds doesn’t require a super long lens and a guille suit. All you’ll need is a tripod, a camera that you can set off remotely, and the right bait and you’ll be showing people the bird in no time.

Setup:

• Bird Feeder – The best type of feeder will be something that’s mobile, stable, and a height that you’ll be able to match with your tripod. You’ll get better results if the feeder is the type where you can predict exactly where the birds will perch and the direction they’ll be facing. Learn about the birds in your area and you may be able to use different types of feed to attract the specific types you want to photograph.
• Choose Your Background – Your background will make or break your shot. Be sure that you don’t have anything distracting that will detract from the image. A shallow depth of field will blur most any background into pleasing tones, but if you’re unable to achieve this effect, the selection of your background will be even more important.
• Lighting – Using a flash here is going to be difficult (explained further below) so be sure that the area the birds will be in is well illuminated. The best illumination will come from placing the camera between the feeder and the sun (but avoid casting a shadow on your subject.)
• A Place to Hide – Concealment is always a good thing with wildlife photography, but since we’re operating so close to the feeder, stealth is extremely important. The birds will quickly acclimate to the presence of your camera and tripod, but odds are they won’t be as comfortable around you. Find some cover and use a remote trigger to set off your camera.

Above is a setup I’ve used a few times. The bird feeder is a very simple design which works out great because it’s easy to move and a good height to use with my tripod in a low configuration. The circular rim means the birds can land from any direction, but by covering a section of the feed I can influence the position they’ll end up standing in. The camera has been placed between a wall of the house and a tree to make it not stand out so much (plus being near trees and bushes encourages more birds to visit.) With this setup I can sit inside the house with my wireless remote and watch the feeder through a window. (My big orange assistant loves to help with the watching for birds part, though he could use some work on the stealth part.)

The Exploding Bird Problem

Birds are skiddish. Even when they’ve gotten used to the presence of the camera, they’re instinctively going to fly away when it makes noise or the flash goes off. On most cameras, the frightening part will happen a fraction of a second before the image is captured. That’s enough time for the bird to react and start to fly away resulting in an image of blurry contortions and spread feathers that looks as though your subject has just popped.

The fix for this of course to take the picture without startling the bird, but that’s easier said than done. Here are some things to watch for and how to deal with them:

• Mirror Slap Noise – On a dSLR, the mirror needs to move up and out of the way of the sensor before a picture can be taken. This motion is what makes the first part of the very recognizable SLR camera sound. Use your camera’s mirror lock up function. If you don’t have this feature, more distance from the feeder is likely your only option.
• Focusing Noise – Even those whisper quiet internal focusing motors will create enough noise to startle most birds at the feeder. Avoid this by having your camera set to manual focus. Some cameras may also generate a beep to indicate they’re focused and ready to take a picture. This should also be disabled.
• AF Assist Light – Many cameras by default will be using some kind of light to assist with range finding and to focus in low light conditions. Make sure this light does not come on before the picture is taken. If it does, disable the feature or cover the light with something so that it can’t be seen.
• Preflash – If you’re using a flash be sure that you’re not using a setting that will emit any flashes before the picture is actually being taken. The red-eye reduction feature will emit a series of preflashes to constrict a person’s pupils which will reduce the amount of light reflected and thereby reduce or eliminate red-eye. Also, TTL flash systems will emit preflash to determine correct exposure settings. The flash, noise, and delay from these kinds of features will most certainly result in an exploded bird.

Camera Technique:

• Fast Shutter Speed – For most shots, a fast shutter speed is going to be the order of the day. How fast depends on the reaction time of the bird, but I’ve found that 1/500 is usually plenty fast to produce a nice, sharp image. At that speed you’ll need a lot of light or a high ISO for a good exposure.
• Manual Focus – If your feeder is stable and the bird lands in roughly the same spot each time then your focus doesn’t need to change. Avoid all of the issues caused by autofocus by setting the focus manually.
• Wide Aperture (But Not Too Wide!) – Having a wide aperture (smaller F number) will allow more light in making it easier to achieve a high shutter speed at a lower ISO. It will also narrow your depth of field and give you the blurry background look. That said, make sure that your DOF is wide enough so that your subject fits! The way I check is to stick two twigs into the feed (one leaning torward, the other leaning away) to mark the boundaries that the bird will sit inside. I then adjust my aperture and focal point so that both sticks are in focus. If you can’t get both sticks in focus, you can move the camera further from the feeder to increase the depth of field.
• Remote Trigger – A wireless remote (meaning that it uses radio and goes through obstacles, as opposed to infrared which requires line of sight) is a much better option here as gives you more flexibility in how you choose to hide.
• Sneak Attack – Eliminate as many causes of bird explosion (described earlier) as you can to obtain a natural looking image. Lock the mirror up, turn off the beeps, cover the lights, focus manually, and bring the cat inside.
• Know Your Flash Limitations – Flash Sync is the fastest shutter speed you can achieve while using a flash. Why this happens is a post unto itself, but basically it’s a complication between how long the brightest part of the flash lasts and the mechanics of how your shutter works. On most cameras I’ve used the max sync is in the 1/250 range which probably won’t be fast enough to freeze a startled bird. Check your manual to determine your camera’s sync speed. If it’s slower than 1/500 you may be disappointed with the results.

(Disclaimer: Lightning will kill you. I am not advising anyone to go out in an electrical storm. This is a descriptive post about how I take lightning images and the techniques that I use. Be smart. Be safe.)

There are few photos that inspire the awe of a good lightning shot. Perhaps it’s the rarity or the sheer power, but there’s no doubt that a lightning shot will draw a lot of attention. The best part is that taking a good shot is actually pretty easy.

The basic things to understand:

• Know Your Weather – I’ve seen storms up and down the east coast and down into the Caribbean. I lived in Florida for a year where I experienced the daily 3pm thunderstorms and now I’m living in the mountains of Southwestern Virginia where we mostly see storms in the late summer. What I’ve found is that storms can be very different from region to region, but are fairly easy to predict at a local level (mountain storms roll through fast and violent while Caribbean thunderstorms seem to drift by slowly.) A good source of real-time radar is very handy to have. My preference is the NOAA site, but there are much more user-friendly sites out there so look around.
• Pick a Good Location – Being in the right position ties into the above point. If you know how the storms in your area will move, you should be able to pick a spot ahead of it and wait. Open sky and a wide angle lens will give you a better chance of catching a bolt. More distance from the storm and a zoom lens is a much safer route to go plus it will give you more time to shoot.
• Time of Day – A storm associated with a frontal area can show up anytime while summer convective storms will typically happen in the afternoon or evening. The darker it is, the easier it will be to capture a well exposed lightning image (more about this in the technical section below.)

Shooting Techniques:

• Correct Exposure – Correct exposure for the actual bolt will be easy to obtain. It’s so bright that it’s going to be a thin white line no matter what your settings. The tricky bit is knowing when you’ve collected enough light to correctly expose the clouds, horizon, foreground, etc. that comprise the rest of your scene. If shooting in the daytime, your camera should be able to give you the correct settings, however, the shutter speed will be so quick that your odds of capturing a bolt will be slim. You can try using an ND filter and/or increasing your F-Stop to reduce the incoming light. Shooting at or after dusk is going to be much easier because you have longer intervals to shoot before your overall image becomes overexposed and washed out.
• The Shot Window – A shot window is just a way of saying the amount of time you have to collect light after you’ve reached a minimum exposure, but before your image becomes overexposed. The window will be from the time it takes to get the minimum exposure to roughly 2 to 4 times that amount. The goal is to start your picture, see some bolts, and have the shutter close inside that shot window. The importance of hitting this window is that it’s ensuring that the overall image is exposed properly and not just areas in the reflecting the lightning flash.As an example, let’s say we’re shooting a scene that without lightning flashes would take a 5 second shutter speed to get a bright enough exposure. It would also take 20 seconds of light collection before we’d consider the image to be overexposed. Our shot window is from 5 to 20 seconds after we’ve opened the shutter. Any more or any less and we will not be happy with the end result.
• Use a Cable Release and Bulb Mode – In most cases a delay timer can be used in place of a remote release. In this case however, the remote shutter will make life much easier. You can still use the delay timer, but the delay could cause some frustrations with missed shots. Bulb mode (opening and closing the shutter manually instead of having the camera use a preset shutter speed) is also beneficial. That will allow you to count to your shot window and close it early or late depending on the amount of lightning flashes you’ve had.
• Pause Your Exposure – If you’d like to fill your shot with multiple bolts, but the storm is dishing them out too slow for your shot window, try pausing your count by blocking the light coming into your lens with a sheet of paper. This trick is more useful when there’s a lot of ambient light which reduces your shot window, but it is also helpful at night to keep out unwanted light (such as the headlights of a car driving past.)

The Walkthrough:
Now let’s put the knowledge and basics into an example of how I got a specific shot (we’ll use the one at the top of this post with the pier.) During June we were having very strong late evening thunderstorms rolling through like clockwork so I decided to catch one. I checked the NOAA radar and saw it approaching so I grabbed the camera with a 14-24mm wide-angle lens and tripod and headed out.

I already had a few spots picked out that would make for a nice composition, so I picked the one that was most favorable for the storm passing by and got into position. Once I had the tripod set and the remote trigger ready to go I took some baseline shots so I could get a feel for what the shot window would be. It was late evening so the shot window turned out to be between 20 and 80 seconds.

When the storm came into view I started shooting. Opening the shutter, counting to my shot window, and closing earlier if I had already seen some bolts, or later if I hadn’t. With the four bolt shot above, those strikes had come in quick succession almost immediately after I had opened the shutter. I continued counting until I hit about 20 seconds and closed the shutter. It wasn’t long after that when a bolt struck very near where I was standing at which point I knew it was time to go inside.

Have you ever known someone who is amazed by simple things, but just isn’t impressed by the really complicated stuff? That’s the kind of reaction I often get to pictures of the moon. For some reason people tend to think there’s some kind of magic involved when you take a picture of the moon, but there’s not. With a tiny bit of technique and some understanding of your subject, your friends will think you’re magic too (and there’s no reason to tell them you’re not!)

I’m stating the obvious here, but there are many different types of moon pictures. There’s the close-up, the shot with foreground objects to show scale, the shot with the moon hanging over something, and the one where the moon is in the shot but it’s also your main light source for everything else. I’m going to attempt to cover the commonalities first, and then touch on the differences for getting those other shots.

Here are the items you will need for any good shot of the moon:

• Sturdy tripod.
• Remote or delay timer.

Before we talk about actually taking the shot, we need to understand some basic info about what’s going on with our subject.

• The moon is a moving target (actually, most of the apparent motion is because you’re standing on a rotating earth) and as with all moving targets, if you want a sharp image, you need a fast shutter speed. The tighter the frame (or the more you’ve zoomed in), the faster the moon will appear to move.
• The moon is very bright relative to the other natural lights in the night sky so your camera is going to have a hard time figuring out the correct exposure. The wider the shot (or the smaller the moon is in your frame), the further off your autoexposure will be.
• The moon rises about 50 minutes later each night. If you found a good location tonight but missed it, you can go out get it again tomorrow.
• The full moon rises at about the same time the sun sets and on the opposite side of the sky.

Now that you better understand your subject we can take a look at capturing it.

• Avoid Camera Shake – Anytime you shoot in the dark or use a long lens, camera shake and motion blur are going to be an issue. Always use a tripod and a remote trigger (or your camera’s built-in timer delay) to get the sharpest image possible. If you don’t have a nice tripod, a bag of rice or birdseed is a great camera rest that will keep your camera steady and still allow you some leeway to frame up your shot. (Just make sure you’ve set it on something solid.)
• Correct Exposure (of the Moon)- The moon is not bright white. When exposed correctly, it should be shades of grey. Sometimes you’ll have a bit of yellow, orange, or red depending on the atmosphere you’re shooting through. Your camera’s exposure meter will most likely try to overexpose the shot (unless you’re spot metering directly from the brightest part.) Use your manual mode or exposure compensation feature to underexpose your shot by 1-2 stops as a starting point and then fine tune from there.
• Focus – Getting proper focus should be fairly straight forward. Even a sliver of a moon should give you enough light to get into sharp focus. If you find yourself manually focusing, it should be close to infinity. If your camera has a Live Mode, you can use that to zoom in on the moon and get sharp focus.
• Eliminate Motion Blur – Just like freezing any motion, you’ll need to use a fast enough shutter speed so that the moon does not move across your frame fast enough to cause blurring. The more you zoom in the faster the moon will appear to move and the faster your shutter speed will need to be. Even though the moon is bright relative to the surroundings, you may still find yourself without enough light for a fast enough shutter speed. Either open your aperture (smaller F number) or increase your ISO, but remember, both of those things may affect your image quality by increasing noise and changing your depth of field.

Other techniques:

• If you’re trying to include other objects in the image, exposure can be tricky. You can, of course, take a multiple exposure or combine images in post to achieve a particular vision, but there’s something satisfying about pulling off a correctly exposed total image that includes the moon as well. There are two ways of doing this. One is to pick a foreground that is artificially lit and/or has water to carry the moon’s reflection. The classic moon over a cityscape is a good example of this. Another is to shoot just before sunset on the day before the full moon. During this time the exposure settings for the moon and for anything being lit by the remaining sunlight will be about the same. If you have a subject in mind, pick a location that puts you in between it and the sunset and the moon will rise close to behind it.
• If you’re trying to use an extremely long lens (or are attached to a telescope), camera shake, mirror slap, and motion blur will be a concern. Deal with those by using a remote shutter release and something to handle the force of the mirror moving.
• Show the size of the moon by including something for scale. A common way to do this is to take the shot while the moon is low and near the horizon. Having the object silhouetted inside the moon is a great effect.
• During a long exposure the moon will overexpose to the point of looking like a softer sun and the sky will become blue. For an interesting shot, try an exposure long enough for the image to look like daytime. The difference will be that you can see the stars.
• Attempting to catch a the smallest moon possible can be fun. Look for a sliver just before (and in the direction of) sunrise when the moon is new.
• Remember, the moon is out in the daytime too!

For more ideas on shooting the moon, check out:
http://flickr.com/groups/moonshots/