{"id":108,"date":"2008-04-21T14:12:56","date_gmt":"2008-04-21T21:12:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/on-photographing-birds\/"},"modified":"2009-11-17T20:06:05","modified_gmt":"2009-11-18T03:06:05","slug":"on-photographing-birds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/on-photographing-birds\/","title":{"rendered":"on photographing birds…"},"content":{"rendered":"

Birds and me. We watch each other. <\/span>Some don\u2019t seem to care how close I get if I\u2019m not looking at them. Yet, when I point the telephoto lens they often fly. The filter probably looks like a big eye.
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\nThe smaller, faster birds tolerate me moving around quite close. The larger birds seem to need more space.
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\nI sometimes photograph through a window if the large shy birds are close to my house. Going out after they\u2019ve arrived just stresses them and makes them fly away. I don\u2019t want to stress the birds. <\/span><\/p>\n

Outdoors, I move slowly, just a big mammal sitting or\u00a0walking slowly about showing little interest in them. I wait for a good image moment and nonchalantly do the capture trying to keep them from feeling stressed by my attention.
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\nI sometimes use a blind outdoors. Still, they often see me go into it or spy me through the lens hole and fly.\u00a0
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\nMy blind is a camouflage pop-up hunting blind. I tie it to the deck rails or stake it to the ground near a tree where birds perch and feed. <\/span>I can set up a tripod in the blind and choose a couple of natural looking perches, hovering spots near feeders and flowers for hummingbirds, or ground feeding areas with nice backgrounds that are easily captured through the lens openings in the blind.<\/span>Then I wait, playing with settings and doing some test captures of my chosen locations. When the birds come, I\u2019m ready photograph.
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\nThe birds always seem to know when I\u2019m in the blind. Some of the friendlier ones have even flown right up to the lens opening to look in at me. But, it\u2019s nice on cold, windy mornings and keeps the sun off my easily sunburned skin.<\/span> <\/span>Out of the blind, I often capture handheld leaving the tripod behind so that I can roam from place to place to capture birds who are watching me to make sure I don\u2019t get to close. My 100 \u2013 400 mm telephoto lens with image stabilization works well handheld at the fast shutter speeds I use for photographing birds.
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\nI try to ID the birds I photograph for titling the prints or posts on my blog.\u00a0 But, I make ID mistakes. <\/span>Fortunately, I receive help from an\u00a011 year old birder who has been meeting me to talk birds at an autumn show I\u2019ve done the past 2 years. She checks all my titles and gives me tips on being a birder.\u00a0 I give her tips on photographing them. It\u2019s a good trade; I\u2019d like to talk with her more often.
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\nI hate to bore my avid birder friends, but it doesn\u2019t matter to me that it\u2019s the same species I\u2019ve photographed so many times before.<\/span><\/p>\n

Birding, in the traditional sense of listing species, is not what it\u2019s all about for me. It\u2019s more about the photograph.
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\nDo I get bored with the 700th stellers jay? Yes, of course, but if I think the light and background will all come together to make a good photograph, I capture the image anyway.
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\nI think of myself as a nature photo-journalist, photographing the daily nature happenings in Consworld. So, even if it\u2019s just another chickadee, it’s today’s news, and I try to get the best image yet,\u00a0like mountain chickadee #492 keeping an eye on me as I photograph.<\/span><\/div>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Birds and me. We watch each other. Some don\u2019t seem to care how close I get if I\u2019m not looking at them. Yet, when I point the telephoto lens they often fly. The filter probably looks like a big eye. \u00a0 The smaller, faster birds tolerate me moving around quite close. The larger birds seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-birds"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=108"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1333,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/108\/revisions\/1333"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/condaily.com\/consworld\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}