Tag: animal photography

Backyard Bird Photos

I haven’t taken many photos of birds in my lifetime because most of the time, they are difficult to photograph subjects; I don’t have (or want) the massive 600mm lens real bird photographers use. Nor am I the photographer who will hide in the bushes for hours to get the perfect shot. I’m a lazy photographer. 😜

It just so happened that for the first time in 15 years of living where I do, a number of birds decided to use our house to build nests. Of the three that were started, only one resulted in baby birds — but it gave me an opportunity to get photos unlike any I’d been able to capture before. Enjoy!

Click each image to see a larger version.

For my fellow photography nerds: these were taken with my Nikon Z6 III and my very slow 28-400mm lens (I didn’t want to get too close) — thank goodness for Lightroom’s excellent noise reduction!

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Like Trying to Photograph Lightning: Taking Pictures of Hummingbirds

I had an opportunity to take photos of feeding hummingbirds this summer when we stopped over for the night in Trail, BC. It was the single hardest photo subject I’ve ever had – hummingbirds are so small, and move so fast, it was extremely difficult to get a focus lock and take a photo. Most of the time the bird would leave the frame before my camera could get a lock. I must have shot 60 frames just to get these four. I had to learn to hear their incoming buzz – they sound like small helicopters – and guess/hope where they’d be. I didn’t have a tripod or a shutter release so I couldn’t set up a “proper” shoot, but it was still fun trying to capture just the right moment. And if there’s one argument for 50 megapixel cameras, it’s this: being forced to crop so much leaves few pixels left. The source photos after processing are only 3.5 to 3.9 megapixels in size, so no giant wall prints for these photos. ?