Birdwatching: how to capture winged beauties on camera

Are you planning to go birdwatching? If so, here are the best tips to photograph winged beauties.

A popular activity while staying with us at Agnantio Hotel – Spa is a day trip to Lake Kerkini. It is an excellent choice of destination for nature lovers and photographers. Lake Kerkini is an artificial lake. However, previously the land was a marshland. Thus, even though it is a man-made lake, it still has unique flora and fauna indigenous to the area.

Lake Kerkini offers stunning views of calm waters, green landscapes, and beautiful birds. During your trip to the lake, there are various activities to immerse yourself in the area’s beauty.

Perhaps, the most popular activity at Lake Kerkini is birdwatching. In fact, many bird lovers come to this gorgeous lake just for birdwatching. Furthermore, many endeavors to photograph these unique birds and show to the world our beautiful nature. But many people still struggle to capture these winged beauties on camera.

To make it easier for you, here are the best tips for capturing birds on camera.

1. Camera Equipment

Camera gear is a crucial part of wild bird photography. For excellent quality photos, investing in a solid camera and one or more long telephoto lenses is advised. Any modern digital camera should be capable of fast-action photography. The most important thing to keep in mind is that the focus acquisition speed on camera and on lenses is far more critical than frames per second.

2. Camera Settings

Maintaining fast shutter speeds, especially for birds in flight and small birds that move very quickly, is extremely important. Since you cannot fix motion blur in post-production, photographers shoot at slightly slower shutter speeds to get the bird’s wings blurred and create a feeling of motion.

But usually, people want to freeze the action. To achieve this, set your camera’s shutter speed between 1/1000 and 1/1600.

3. Approaching Birds

Pretty much all birds have superb vision, so the bird will likely see you first. Also, all birds have their own “comfort zones,” and if you try to get any closer, they feel threatened and fly away. Different birds have different tolerance levels for human interaction. Some birds will let people get pretty close, especially if they are used to them. Those birds are the easiest to photograph.

Other birds are timid and don’t let people come anywhere close. The key to successful bird photography is to make the bird feel safe and natural.

This can be done by wearing clothes that help you blend in with the environment, approach a bird at a slow pace without any sudden movements, and be as quiet as possible.

4. Photographing Birds

For birds in flight, high shutter speeds are required, or the bird will look blurry. A minimum shutter speed of 1/1000-1/1600 for birds in flight is perfect. But in some cases, slightly lower shutter speeds are also good, depending on the size of the bird and how fast it is flapping its wings.

Make sure that there is a good distance between the bird and the objects behind it. The greater the distance, the better the background blur.

( Photo by Ben Lambert on Unsplash  )