Lighting Issues and Bird Photography
No discussion of bird photography would be complete without adding a few books worth of information on lighting. For this article, a few paragraphs can only introduce the subject.
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In fact, the word photography comes from the Greek phos, (light), and graphein, (to write or draw). Bird photography can be conceptualized as the art and science of drawing birds using light. Technically speaking again, your drawings are transferred onto a photographic medium such as film, or in the case of digital cameras, a storage device.
Lighting conditions are essential in determining a cardinal's shade of red or a bluebird's shade of blue in any picture you take. To get the clearest, most colorful bird pictures, think sun. You'll be amazed at how the proper lighting can highlight the various features of your bird.
Generally speaking, morning and late afternoon sunshine provides the best lighting conditions because the lower lighting angles bring out the best color and contrast in bird feathers. The pictures below provide a nice contrast for discussion.
Both pictures share similar characteristics. They were taken at a distance of approximately eight feet using a macro setting. Both were taken using the same five mega pixel point and shoot camera. During the editing process, both pictures were resized (reduced) to a 250 pixel width size, and compressed by 25%, for the presentation.
Lighting is the key factor differentiating between picture quality. The top picture is a male Varied Thrush taken in foggy morning conditions during winter. The picture color is generally pale and the face and feathers lack descriptive features. The second picture is a Lesser Yellowlegs, and it was taken under optimal lighting conditions on a warm, sunny, summer morning. The eyes, bill and feathers all have a nicer color and clarity compared to the thrush picture.
Low light conditions are problematic for bird photographers using any type of digital camera, including SLRs. In instances where you can not choose your lighting conditions, a friend of mine, and award winning horse photographer, Cindy Pierson Dulay offers the following advice.
"For low light photos with a DSLR you have to remember to do a couple of things.
First you need good lenses, one that can do f2.8 across all zoom distances is best. If you just use the kit lenses that sometime come with the camera, you will not be happy with the results. They are OK for average situations but not extremes like low light.
Second you need to remember to up your ISO setting. They don’t' do auto ISO, so you have to remember to bump it up to 800, 1000, or even 1600. Don’t' be afraid of the high ISO settings. I use 1600 on my Nikon D50 quite regularly and it gives very nice results without too much noise. While I don't do much low light nature photography, I do shoot fast moving horses in all kinds of weather and sometimes at night, so a 24-70 f2.8 and a 70-200 f2.8 are my main lenses. I also have a fixed 85 f1.8 for really dark situation and it makes a huge difference."
As a final note on light, consider using side or back lighting to change the look and feel of your photographs. If you are standing with one side facing the sun while it's shining on a bird, you will notice a shadow. Side lit pictures produce a nice depth to the photo along with providing quality colors.
The important issue with side lighting is to remember that too much of a good thing is often bad. Because light angles partially determine feather colors in birds, extreme side lighting often produces darker or lighter shaded birds than you might desire.
Back lighting a photo means placing the sun behind the subject rather than behind your back. It's a nice technique to use at dusk when you want to capture a silhouette. The picture of the osprey nest on the left was taken during sunset.
© 2002-2007 Patricia A. Michaels