3 Tips for Starting Bird Photography in your Garden

Over the last few weeks I’ve been increasing asked about how I take photography of the birds in my back garden, from a variation of settings that I use to how I get sharp images, to the camera and lens recommended. So I thought I would share my 3 simple tips for getting bird images from your back garden.

1 . Get to know your Birds.

First and foremost it is vital to get to know your birds. Birds depending on the breed may frighten easily, specially if they're not familiar with you or your garden. To make them more familiar and comfortable the first thing to do is to leave out food and water. Especially in the recent winter months a food source from a feeder could make the difference between life and death. 

As mentioned some birds will scare and fly away as soon as they see you at first. However the more times they see you and realise you not a threat to them, they will start come more often and the stay out when your outside to. This can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months but eventually they will become comfortable with you and the environment.

Once they feel more comfortable, you’ll start to develop an understanding of their eating habits and the time of day they tend to visit your garden. This can also work the other way too. If you always fill out the bird feeders at 7am for example then the birds will know fresh food is likely to out and will wait nearby for new food to be put out.

I put a mixture of protein fat balls, seed, nuts and mealworms. A little pointer, try to keep mealworms off the ground as they are very harmful to hedgehogs.

2 . Practice, practice, practice and know your camera and lens.

How to do you get good at anything? Practice, practice and more practice. 

There is a theory that if you practice or study any subject or discipline for 10,000 hours you will become an expert within that field. Now, I don’t personally know if that is true or not, but in my own experience to take great photos is to take lots and lots of bad photos. The more photos you take you, the more learn about photography basics and your camera whether you’re shooting in Manual or Aperture Priority.

There is no right or wrong answer, to what mode to shoot in. However I would recommend as I did myself, when starting to shoot in Aperture Priority as manual mode can be very haunting when starting out. Setting wise I would always becoming with shooting f4 and above. My current lens the Nikon 55-300mm has a variable aperture of F/4.5-5.6 so at full 300mm the highest aperture I can get in f5.6. This provides an problem in low light. So depending on your camera you can use auto ISO setting to increase your camera sensitivity to light whilst keeping your shutter speed quick enough t capture any movement from our feather friends. If you find your images are either over or underexposed you can change you camera exposure compensation meter. This is usually displayed as a (+/-) symbol on your camera and it will tell you camera to over or under expose an image by couple of stops of light. Please be aware that exposure compensation will not work when you shoot on manual mode. Only semi-automatic modes like Aperture Priority.

3 . Composition in Key

Like every genre of photography light is absolutely key and bird photography is no different. My favourite time to photograph the birds in my garden is in the late afternoon as sun beginning to set. Otherwise known as golden hour light. This can also be achieved in the early hours as the sun is rising. But this comes down to knowing your birds again and when they visit your garden.

Getting your composition right is absolutely crucial to any image and will take time to develop style of bird photography. The key principle is to use the rule of thirds. I know it is the most mentioned composition technique but it really does work. Try to capture you bird subject a little off centre and try if you can to fill the frame as much as you can. This will depend on the distance between you and your feeder and if needed use your camera cropped mode.

I really hope that these 3 tips help you with your garden bird photography, if they do comment below and let me know.

See you all soon.

Setting Up Your Garden for Wildlife Photography

Hey everybody, hope you’re all doing and keeping well.

Today I wanted to share why I absolute love spending time in my garden with nature whilst capturing it with my camera.

Setting up the Garden Environment 

As you’ll  all be aware this year we’ve all be affected by the coronavirus (covid19) in some shape or form wherever we are in the world. With living in Scotland we came under restrictions in March/ April where a lot of us including myself had to make the transition from traveling into the office to working from home. Where only essential travel was necessary with a 5 mile restrictions which meant that the only ‘exploring‘ I could do was a very small woodland walk. Which is lovely, but every small and unfortunately for wildlife there is very slim pickings. 

So I decided to set up my own garden to try and invite birds and other wildlife. At first I set up some bird feeders with birdseed, nuts and fatballs at first no one came to visit. Which was very disappointing and just as I was beginning to lose faith, the birds slowly but surely they started to visit.  At first we had a few House Sparrows visit then  followed, Starlings, Blackbirds, Goldfinches, Greenfinches, Bluetits, Coaltits. Greattits. Wrens, Jackdaws, and a Sparrowhawk.

Then I introduced mealworms and my world, I’ve never seen so many birds in such a small area. They certainly to love their mealworms.

With this I decided to build a hedgehog house for the garden. Unfortunately as of yet, no hedgehogs have decided to pop by, but fingers crossed if they do, there will be someplace safe for them to stay in the winter should they choose to.

If you want to start encouraging wildlife to your garden. Get yourself some bird feeders make sure you space them apart and off the ground. You don’t want any cats to get their paws on them. Also mix up what you feed them, it could be fatballs, bird seed, berries, nuts or their favourite mealworms. I’m sure in no time the feathered friends near you will will be visiting and loving your garden in no time.

Get to Know the Wildlife

This may sound silly, but I genuinely feel that I have made connections with the wildlife especially with my favourite the little House Sparrows. I really believe that they know and feel comfortable and safe in my garden as they have no fear when I’m out there. 

At first, they would fly away as soon as I would go outside but now they feel comfortable enough around and are always delighted to see me put fresh food and water out for them.

This is why, I believe it has helped with getting so many great bird photos from just my back garden. As their always there in most weather conditions and I believe they feel safe on the whole. However with the popularity of the garden increasing in has also attracted a few birds of prey to very occasionally visit. Mainly Sparrowhawks. 

On one occasion in the I went out to the garden and saw a Sparrowhawk trying to get into one of my bush plants. After seeing me the sparrow hawk decided to fly off. However after checking there was a very shaken House Sparrow in the bush. She seemed petrified and almost frozen still, so I left out some food and water the bottom of the bush. I kept a eye on her and must of been more than a hour before she decided to move on. I know that’s nature way and this does happen, but I’m really glad she survived the encounter.

It Can Improve your Photography and Your Mental Health

As mentioned I absolute love spending time in garden with nature. It has profoundly improved my photography with getting out with my camera where with coronavirus could of prevented me from visiting my usually places and travelling far distances for a photo adventures. Simply getting in the garden and taking photos of the wildlife and different angles and perspectives in all weather conditions as made me a better photographer.

It also has a benefited my metal health, by getting outside and de-stressing from an extremely stressful day job within this period which is stressful enough. Just disconnecting and not having worry about anything for even just for 20-30 minutes day makes a huge difference.

What do you do to help your mental health and wellbeing? 

A walk, run , yoga or something else? Let me know in the comments below. It would be if could all share or ideas and methods and that might help someone else.

Also on the subject of mental health, I have decided to take part in Movember, where I will shaving my face (the lower half) and growing the moustache to raise awareness for mens health and on particular mental .

If you would like to make a donation you can at::

https://movember.com/m/johnrennie87?mc=1

Keep tabs on my Instagram and twitter for updates throughout the month. (@johnrennie87)

Thank you once again and see you all soon,

3 Reasons Why You Should Love Your Kit Lens

Hey everyone, how are you all today?

I wanted to share with you, why I truly believe your kit is a fantastic must have first lens especially when starting out. It will teach so much when starting out in your photography journey.

Useful Range of Focal Length

With every kit lens it covers a wide range of focal lengths, most kit lenses will give focal range of 18mm to 55mm. This will cover the same focal length as 3 of the most popular focal lengths on prime lenses. The 24mm, 35mm and 50mm. It isn’t too wide so you don’t get detraction in you images. where the sides go wonky and isn’t a telephoto lens so you don’t get too close when you’re zoomed in. The only drawback in the high aperture but as long as you're not shooting low light this lens is brilliant and will allow for bigger area to be in focus.

It’s Sharper than you think!!

The great thing about the development is camera technologies in the last decade is that every lens now is super sharp. Especially if shoot landscapes which will provide you with super sharp images at f/8 which is the lens sweet spot. In some cases is arguably equal or better quality than some higher intermediate or professional glass.

It’s crazy affordable!!

Something which has be spoken about is just now cheap these lenses are. For the price, what you're getting is fantastic. It’s at a price where as if your were to drop or damage the lens its so affordable to replace Compared to the upgraded from the manufacture you talking £1000 extra, and when you're starting you don’t need to spend a lot after you’ve got your camera. Just shoot and be creative. You’ll learn to love it.

So guys there is the 3 reasons why do should love your kit lens.

Let me know what you think. Do you love your kit lens to? Have you upgraded and if so, why and what too. Let me know the comment section below and until the next time see you all soon.

Shot on Nikon D5100 with Kit Lens 18-55mm

Blog is Returning

Hey Guys,

Just to let you know the blog is returning.

Excited, I know, I am!

From September I will be sharing one blog a month talking about my photography and videography. Sharing skills and techniques and tutorials. I really hope you enjoy and we can build our small photo and film community.

Looking forward to it and see you all next month.

Thanks

John