This short article features an egret simultaneously catching 2 fish and dropping 1 while fishing at Grindstone Creek in Hendrie Valley. All of the photographs were captured handheld using Pro Capture H technology.
Category Archives: Bird Photography
Thinking Like a Bird
Thinking like a bird isn’t being a bird brain… but rather attempting to put ourselves inside the thought process of an avian subject. Observing a bird in an openminded manner sometimes allows us to gain a deeper sense of what it is going to do. What is making it anxious. Or aggressive. Or feeling connected to a decision that it is pondering.
Tripod Or Stool
Depending on the camera gear a photographer owns, their choice for some additional stabilization or acquiring a difficult shooting angle, may come down to using a tripod or stool. It has been over three years since I began shooting with Olympus M4/3 camera gear and thus far I’ve not had any need to use any of my tripods or a monopod. This would change if I began to experiment with light painting using the Live Composite mode.
Bird Photography Fundamentals
There are four bird photography fundamentals we can keep in mind that help add some interest, action, and drama to our images. Rather than camera gear based fundamentals, they relate to the kinds of behaviours that birds exhibit. To state these four bird photography fundamentals as politely as possible these include flying, feeding, fighting, and fornicating. I like to call these the “four F’s” of bird photography. Of course, this doesn’t mean that we should stop photographing perched birds.
Redefine Camera Systems
We live in a photographic age that is causing us to redefine camera systems well beyond our previous, and simplistic, two dimensional view. It wasn’t that many years ago when many photographers only considered two factors. The camera body. And, the lenses associated with it. In the past some cameras were bought more because of the lenses that could be married to it, rather than specific attributes of the body itself.
Cardinal Leaping
This article features twelve handheld photographs of a cardinal leaping… all of which were created with an E-M1X using Pro Capture H at 60 frames-per-second. Many of us who enjoy bird photography concentrate on birds-in-flight. We sometimes forget that small birds frequently leap between branches. These images can be interesting captures, especially if the bird’s wings are at least somewhat extended.
Merganser Courtship Display
This article features 15 consecutive handheld Pro Capture H images of a merganser courtship display, captured during a recent visit to LaSalle Park. Fortunately I had already set a practice session objective for myself that day which was to photograph everything using Pro Capture H… so I was ready for this opportunity.
NOTE: This article has been updated based on bird behaviour information provided by one of our readers, Glen Fox. Our thanks to Glen!
High ISO Crops
This article features high ISO crops of some handheld photographs I originally captured back in June 2019 shortly after I acquired my Olympus gear. I shoot my E-M1X up to ISO-6400 when required but seldom use ISO values above that. So, most of these photographs fall firmly in the test category.
Rediscovered Moments
As photographers many of us have had rediscovered moments when we’ve gone through some of our unprocessed image files and found some useable photographs. Over the past few weeks I’ve been cleaning up some old photography files that for whatever reason I left dormant and unprocessed. This article shares some rediscovered moments.
Egret Preening
During an early morning visit to Hendrie Valley last fall I was fortunate to come across an egret preening in some softer light. Lighting like this is helpful when photographing white birds in terms of capturing more feather details. This article discusses some of the decisions that I made when capturing these photographs, and also when I was working on them in post.