What Makes A Good Bird Photo?

There’s more to bird photography than just capturing the subject in perfect detail and maximum sharpness – and it’s not about the gear, either.

Although I’ve only been photographing birds for just over a year, I’ve come to realise that ‘bird photography’ is more about actual photography, about composition and lighting – than simply visually cataloguing birds. It’s not about equipment, either. You could have a posse of the latest gold-plated Hasselblads and metre-long telephoto lenses and still take crap photos; conversely, you might have pretty ordinary gear and yet capture something really special.

My epiphany came from the advice of my daughter and my wife. As they watched over my shoulder as I edited my ‘draft’ photos in Darktable they saw me discarding or ignoring photos which I thought hadn’t come out right… “Wait!” they exclaimed, “You’re throwing away your best pictures!” And at their prompting I began to look again at photos which weren’t perhaps technically perfect, but which said something.

There was one photo of a Spangled Drongo on a dead branch which they particularly liked, and which I had been about to delete… but there was something about the lines, the curves of the bird’s tail and how they stood out against the pale wood of the branch. Not something I would have given a second glance at, previously.

Since then, I’ve been thinking a lot more about composition, about lighting and colour. Seeing Bush Curlews around the campsite, I thought I’d try and capture these amazing birds with a vintage manual 135mm Minolta Rokkor lens. This was a lens which I had picked up in a Op shop for $10. This lens doesn’t have the clinical sharpness of my modern telephotos, but it does have an amazing way with colour. I was pleased with the result.

Now, I’m not claiming that these examples are masterpieces. They’re not. They are a start however, to a new way of seeing, and a new attitude to what makes a good photo.

YouTube experts like Duade Paton and Simon d’Entremont are worth watching on this subject. I’ve certainly learnt a lot from both of these incredibly talented photographers.

And this I know… I still have an awful lot to learn.