If I were only allowed to give you ONE tip to improve your bird photography, this would be that tip.
Point your shadow at the bird. Side lighting is cool for landscapes. Rembrandt style lighting is cool for portraits. Simple, straight-on, in your face, front lighting is cool for birds.
Unfortunately, the way Instagram works keeps changing and it’s tough to come up with a strategy to organically improve your interactions there.
But there is ONE thing I have tried that works for me, anyway.
Using the right hashtags and using them in the right place.
AUTHOR’S NOTE: I realized that while I often talk about my bird photography, I haven’t written many pieces about the basics of bird photography. If you have any interest in this genre, I think that this list of tips will help you save time, and improve your keeper ratio. Please let me know if there are any glaring omissions or topics you think I should have mentioned in this post.
I am lucky that I started working as a professional photographer in the old days when there was less competition. I occasionally think about what it would be like today. In some ways, the Internet has made it easier than ever to share your work with a large audience, but it has also made it much harder to stand out since everyone with a camera wants to make some extra change from their hobby.
I continue to be amazed at the myths surrounding cropping. This should have been long settled. There is no contest award for those who do NOT crop and generally, there’s not much penalty (if any) to making the decision to crop. All modern cameras costing $500 or more offer a sensor that allows cropping up to 50%. If you have a 20 megapixel sensor or larger, you can do so with impunity.
“Results are uncertain even among the more experienced photographers.” – Matthew Brady I once heard landscape photographer John […]
I am starting a new series here at Picture Methods called – “How I got the shot.” A few times each month, I’ll post a picture and discuss some basic things about how it came to be. I got the idea from questions I’ve received over the last few months about various images. Hopefully everyone will find something they can take away from these posts.
