Table Of Content

creative BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY Essential Tips and Techniques Bill Coster Text and photographs copyright © 2009 by Bill Coster Jacket and interior photographs by Bill Coster First Greystone edition 2010 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the publisher or a licence from The Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright licence, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777. Greystone Books An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc. 2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201 Vancouver BC Canada V5T 4S7 www.greystonebooks.com First published in Great Britain in 2009 by New Holland Publishers (UK) Ltd. Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada ISBN 978-1-55365-545-9 (pbk.) ISBN 978-1-55365-932-7 (ebook) To my wife, Diana, whose love and support for everything I do makes life so much more worthwhile. Contents Introduction The basics Digital equipment Portraits Flight Life cycle Food and drink Action and behaviour Dawn and dusk Being more creative Introduction My interest in the natural world goes back to when I was child, although being brought up in the East End of London was probably not the best environment for searching out wildlife. No one in my family was interested in nature, so where or how I become so fascinated with it is a mystery, even to me. In the urban environment of my youth, it was small creatures such as insects that first caught my attention, mainly because there was quite a diverse range of them around, even in a cityscape. As I grew up and travelled further afield, my interests broadened while I encountered a much wider variety of animals and plants, particularly birds. Photographing wildlife started as just a way of recording what I had seen, but gradually took over completely, until my trips away were centred around what I could photograph, rather than on how many different species I was likely to see. One aspect of bird photography particularly fascinated me – birds in flight. In the early days of slow films and manual focus there was not an abundance of flight shots around, and I discovered that I had a knack for taking them. This enabled me to carve out a niche in the market, getting published in bird magazines and eventually signing up with one of the top natural history agencies in Britain. While all this was going on I was working in the IT industry, so I was at rather a disadvantage to many of the full-time photographers my pictures were competing against. As my sales increased, I finally decided the time was right and gave up the day job, something I have never regretted, even for a second. Now I travel the world to photograph landscapes, mammals, plants, insects and of course birds. This is a lifestyle I would never have dreamed of as a boy, searching for caterpillars on the waste ground between houses in London. Bird photography is a surprisingly broad subject, covering not only different aspects of birds’ behaviour, but also different ways of capturing this with a camera, from simple portraits to impressionist visions of the birds in their environment. To try and cover such a large subject matter in one go would be very confusing, so to simplify things I have divided the main subject of bird photography into several categories, thus allowing us to concentrate on one aspect at a time. One chapter is devoted to each of these categories, using examples of pictures that are further split into the different aspects of the subject under discussion. So, for example, the chapter on flight photography contains sections on take-off, landing and flocking, with different images used for each aspect. The book is loosely based on a series of articles I wrote as a photographic consultant for Birds Illustrated entitled ‘Being creative with your camera’. A magazine article is necessarily quite brief, so the book contains not only many more pictures, but also more categories and much more information. Although there is a chapter with advice on camera and computer equipment based on my own experience, the main thrust of the book is about using that most precious piece of photographic equipment – your creativity. There are quite a few books on the market that deal with the nuts and bolts of how to use your camera to get pictures of birds, covering the practical side of bird photography. In recent years, with the advent of digital photography, we have learned a whole new skill-set to make the most of digital images using software packages such as Adobe Photoshop, and there are countless books on this subject. It would be pointless to repeat this information in here. Every image in the main section of the book includes exposure details where available, and the text contains information about the circumstances surrounding the making of each picture. The main focus of the book is on creating good images of the birds you meet, going about their often complex and fascinating lives. Photography, like any art form, is very subjective, and what one person likes another may not. There are certain general ‘rules’ about composition, and I refer to some of them while discussing the pictures in the main part of the book. However, I’ve never been a great stickler for rules in many aspects of life, and over the years

Description:

This beautifully illustrated, inspirational guide to bird photography is packed with practical advice for how to photograph birds presented in an informative but accessible writing style. Creative Bird Photography offers a fresh approach to its subject, looking closely at how to photograph specific aspects of birds’ lives, such as eating and drinking, courtship, and flight. The author gives examples, demonstrating particular points and approaches for taking great shots of all of these daily bird activities as well as taking "mood" photographs at dawn and dusk. Each shot is accompanied by detailed technical data, information about locations, and advice about other challenges that will need to be surmounted in order to achieve the perfect shot. Coster also shares fascinating anecdotes about his encounters with the birds featured. There are also up-to-date sections on bird photography basics, including equipment and storage of digital images.