If I am heading out with a plan to photograph a particular bird, the first part of that plan is to think about where the bird is likely to be.  I think about how I might capture the bird with a background that will allow the bird to be the focus of the image. Ideally, I will know the location well and will know exactly where my best vantage point is to achieve that. However sometimes it can be very easy to get excited about seeing the bird and forget what is behind it.

It has taken me many years, but I am now a little more controlled. While I might see the birds and know that an image could be captured, if the background is not going to work for me I will not click the shutter. Don’t get me wrong, I will still capture a huge number of images in my attempt to get the perfect shot, but I am way more selective about when I start the process. Read on to see how I achieve soft dreamy backgrounds.

Until I am familiar with a location and the birds there, I find it is a good idea to go without any expectation of achieving ‘the’ image of my dreams. Most birds are creatures of habit. They will use the same perches regularly. They will often have a pattern of behaviour that they will repeat often.  Many of them are territorial and can be found in the same area on a regular basis. All these behaviours allow me to look for the perch that has the best background for the image I want to create.

What I am looking for when checking out the location of my shoot, is distance between where I want the bird to be and anything behind it. Using my front yard (which is very small) as an example, I am looking to position myself where I can see the bird land as close to me as possible, with a clean background behind it. Usually this will be the trees across the road from my house.

We all hate it when a judge says, “if you had just moved a little to the right (or left)”, however it is a useful phrase to keep in mind. I frame the image, take the shot, and then move a little either to the right left or right (if it is safe to do so), and take another if I have the opportunity.  I like to give myself options when it comes to processing my images. I don’t keep them all, just the ones I am happy with.

I move between F4.5 and F8 in my bird photography. It generally depends on how sharp I want the entire bird to be. Most of the time my lens is set to F8, and all these example images have that setting. I am not going to achieve a soft background if my depth of field is too wide, so I keep it to where I know the bird will be clear, and the background softly out of focus.

Once I have done all your prep work, know where I want to be situated to achieve the image I have in mind, then it is just a case of waiting for the birds to behave as predicted to capture that magic image.

This is where I don’t want to rush, I try to be patient, relax and wait for the birds to land where I want them to. I pre-focus so the camera is at the ready and I don’t get caught up in the rush to focus.

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This article was first published on the New Zealand Photographic Society’s bi-monthly ezine, NZ CameraTalk December 2024.