How to Photograph Birds with Any Camera using a Hunting Blind and Bird Calls Video Lecture | Capture like a Pro: Digital Photography Tutorial - Professional Skills

hi I'm Tony Northrup and for chapter 8
of my book stunning digital photography
I'm in my backyard to show you how to
get extremely detailed close-up
beautiful and well lit pictures of
songbirds and the best part is you can
use these techniques to get great
pictures with any telephoto lens even an
inexpensive 75 to 300 or 70 to 200 just
bring whatever you got now I'm standing
in front of this forsythia bush because
just a few days ago it was brilliant
yellow and it looked just absolutely
gorgeous and I knew it'd be the perfect
backdrop for some bird pictures it's
lost its bloom since then but I still
want to show you how I got all the birds
to come to this bush and perch just
perfectly for me I knew I wanted this
Bush to be my backdrop but I didn't have
birds perching for me you can hear there
are a few birds who live in the bush but
they tended to stay inside the bush
where I couldn't photograph them so use
a couple of techniques to draw them out
and the first is of course food it's
really easy to set up a bird feeder and
I've put three different bird feeders
here to attract different types of birds
so get the food that is appropriate for
the types of birds that you have in your
area you'll see I have two of the
identical scroll per bird feeders here
filled with different seeds and then I
have a hummingbird feeder here this will
bring the birds out of the bush and
birds have a tendency to hop from
wherever they rest over to a bird feeder
grab some food and then hop back into
the branches I don't want to take
pictures of birds on bird feeders please
don't do that it's not a great picture
you want them in a natural environment
so you want to photograph them after
they hop off of the bird feeder to eat
their seed the bush itself wasn't the
perfect backdrop because there were so
many leaves and blooms in the way that
it was hard to get a clear shot of the
birds so what I did was I set up a
branch that I cut from another tree and
buried it about six inches into the
ground this is enough to keep it nice
and steady so that even the larger birds
can land on it as a decent perch the
notice that I trimmed all the excess
branches from this branch so that there
were absolutely no distractions all I
have left is a nice clean perch for them
so this is how I got the birds to the
bush I left this up for a couple of days
that they could find it and kind of get
used to it now I'll show you how I got
so close to the birds this is my hunting
blind it's a two or three person pop-up
hunting blind cost about $85 so you can
see it's got a camouflage exterior which
helps me in the woods but probably
doesn't help so much in a back yard
since it's got trees printed on it
however it still serves to mask my
presence and my movements you can see
the front of my lens is poking out here
I have the camera attached to a tripod
this is a camouflage mesh which I've
hung over the window the nice thing
about the mesh is it makes it more
difficult for the birds to see through
the window and see my own movements but
it still allows me to see through it at
least it took a little bit of practice
but I was able to watch what was going
on on the outside you can see I pulled a
hole in the mesh and poked the front of
the lens through it that allows me to
freely move the lens without having the
camouflage actually covering the lens at
all I set the blind of about 10 feet in
front of the bird feeders and where I
hope the birds would perch that was
plenty of room for me if you have a
shorter lens you can set your blind up a
little bit closer might take you a
little bit longer for the birds to get
accustomed to if you can if you're
setting it up in your own yard set the
blind up a couple of days ahead of time
and this will give the birds a chance to
get accustomed to the presence of the
blind so they're not freaked out by this
new thing anymore once you're inside the
blind you'll find it takes ten or
fifteen minutes for them to settle down
because of course they'll notice you
getting in there and be a little freaked
out but look these are just long evolved
dinosaurs they don't have the best
memory now let's take a look inside the
blind now as you can see the blind does
help mask your movements but the birds
can still see through the window and the
mesh here helps to but frankly I'm
dressed like Colonel Sanders and they
have this like blinding white hair so
I'm still going to stand out I need to
blend into the black interior of the
blind and not the camouflage outside so
I'm gonna put on a black shirt and a
dark hat and meet you back here in a
second this particular blind costing
about eighty five dollars it's a pop-up
line and it sets up in about three
minutes you can also get smaller blinds
for a single person that will only cost
you about thirty five bucks just be sure
that you get a blind that has an
room for a tripod inside of it you're
going to want the sturdiest tripod that
you have and the biggest head that you
have because most tripods are meant to
hold smaller cameras with the regular
zoom lens and not a telephoto zoom lens
give a bigger zoom lens it'll have a
mount that's directly on the lens itself
and you should use that if you don't no
problem at all just attach a tripod
directly to your camera now if you're
doing this right then you've got the
blind really close to the birds and your
telephoto lens won't focus that close to
work around this you can add an
extension tube an extension tube just
separates the lens and the body just a
little bit it's as black piece right
here and that allows your lens to focus
closer than it would normally you lose
Infinity focus but it's worth it to be
able to get this close to birds
extension tubes like this don't cost you
too much you can get a complete set for
fifty to seventy-five bucks just make
sure that you get one that supports
autofocus for more information about
extension tubes refer to chapter 12 of
my book sending digital photography as
well as chapter 8 so now let's talk
about camera settings I put my camera in
shutter priority and set the shutter to
one 250th of a second I also set the ISO
to automatic this will allow the camera
to automatically change both the ISO and
aperture as the lighting conditions
change or as birds move from light and
into the shadow one 250th of a second is
generally enough to get most of your
pictures nice and sharp of course our
cameras on a tripod so we don't need to
worry about camera shake but we still
have to worry about motion blur and
these little birds they never stop
moving they're constantly changing
position and twitching their head so
you're never going to get every shot
sharp your best bet is to take as many
pictures as possible and hope that some
of them capture that moment when they
just freeze very briefly in between
their jerky head movements once you get
some practice with one 250th of a second
try using an even lower shutter speed
often shoot down as low as 198th of a
second this lets your camera use the
lowest possible ISO reducing your noise
and allows the camera to increase the
aperture allowing for more depth of
field and even sharper pictures so
experiment with different settings also
use both continuous focus and
tenuous shutter hold down that shutter
button it take just as many pictures as
you can you should be taking hundreds of
pictures per session phones you can keep
that burden focus you should keep firing
now remember it doesn't count if you
don't have a contact so keep that finger
off the shutter until the bird is either
in a perfect profile or looking towards
you if you have a hard time focusing
switch from continuous focus to single
autofocus and after you take every three
or four shots refocus the camera and try
again you'll find that you'll still get
plenty of shots out of focus but again
this is one of those cases where the
first tip in the book will help you out
take lots of pictures and delete most of
them now the bird food is a good way to
get birds to your feeder but what if
there's a specific species you're after
and they're not landing in the area well
I've listened to a lot of bird songs so
I've gotten familiar with them and while
I was in my blind I could hear this
Cardinal calling outside of the blind
and I could even see it in the trees
around me but it wouldn't come perch
where I could take a picture so I broke
out my iPhone here any smart phone will
do and I've played a pre-recorded
Cardinal song over and over again on a
loop wouldn't you know it in about ten
seconds it started singing back and in a
couple of minutes it came to check out
either its potential mate or competition
and it kept looking around for about
half an hour for this other bird moving
from spot to spot so it gave me lots of
great opportunities to photograph it
brute calls will give you varying
effects depending on the bird and the
specific type of call to each have many
different calls and some of them mean
I'm hungry some of the mean I'm looking
for a mate some of them are defending
their territory might actually scare
birds away some calls like those of a
blue jay are rather aggressive and will
scare other types of birds away so use
them with caution and knowledge but it's
a great thing to experiment with because
it can lure in just about any bird if
you learn what you're doing at the end
of this lesson I'll jump back to my
computer and show you how you can get
mp3s of just about any bird call use the
movements of the Sun and clouds to
control your lighting I think the best
lighting is when the Sun is low to the
sky and behind you then it's creating
this front lighting on the birds that
just really brings out their bright
colors and gives them this
really distinct catch light I also like
nice overcast skies because they bring
out the depth and create this really
large even catch light that shows the
round form of the birds eyes back lining
is to be avoided because that casting
bird in shadow creates a nice rim of
light but you don't get any catch light
and the colors just looked completely
washed out if you have to shoot with the
sky as your background and make sure
that you have clear blue skies a nice
cold day helps here if there are clouds
in the sky or the Sun is behind the bird
then you'll end up with this ugly blown
out white background now you're
definitely going to need to plan to
spend some time just waiting for the
birds I spent anywhere from half an hour
to a couple of hours out here at a time
when you have some downtime I suggest
you refocus the camera on the ideal
place for the birds to perch so you know
that branch that you set up in the
ground focus on the best possible place
might not be where the birds show up but
if they do you'll be ready and I'd
rather have you miss a shot when the
bird is perched in some less than ideal
place then have you missed that perfect
shot so now I'll show you how you can
find bird calls and copy them over to
your phone I'm at the all about bird sub
org website which is generously run by
the Cornell Lab of Ornithology I'll
search for as species that I'm
interested in about the Tufted Titmouse
and now I'll just scroll down to the
sound tab this shows all the different
sounds that they have on record for the
Tufted Titmouse and often there's really
useful description so you might browse
through and pick the song that you're
most interested in at this point I need
to view the source of the page so I can
find the underlying file that is played
on the webpage and download it so I'll
right-click the page and then click view
page source I'm using Google Chrome
other browsers will do something similar
though they all work a little bit
differently now I'm going to search the
page by pressing ctrl F on my keyboard
and I'm going to search for the phrase
dot mp3 this shows me the underlying
file name that's being played when you
click that little play tool on the
webpage you can see the it says value
equals and then mp3 equals everything
after that equals sign I want to copy
the clipboard right through the dot mp3
so it'll start with a slash and it will
end with mp3 then I'll right-click this
and copy it to the clipboard now I'll
just open up a new tab and go to WWE
labored zorg and after org I'm going to
paste in the path that I copied so now
it reads WWll birds org slash guide
slash sound slash species and then the
actual name of the file and I'll press
ENTER here now I can just right click
the page and click save as pick a folder
and specify a name for it and then save
it now it's just like any other mp3 file
you can drag it into the iTunes library
or copy it to your phone or other mp3
player however it is you normally would
do a music file if you liked this video
there's a lot more like it in my book
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so much