Bird Photography: What I’ve learned from photographing at my local spot.

I have heard a lot of good wildlife photographers say ‘the best photos you’ll take will probably be from your backyard’. And I have experienced it first hand in the last year and a half by photographing at Melton Botanical Garden. I will share how having a local spot got me thinking differently, and lead me towards some of my now favourite visual styles.

I have listed below the main advantages I found of shooting locally and explained them with some examples one by one.

• I knew where to find birds
• I knew where & when the good light will be.
• I got to know the birds better.
• It was easier to get close to birds.
• Lack of time was not an issue.
• Different seasons provided different photo opportunities with same birds.
• Through experimenting I discovered the few visual styles I’m into.

I knew Where to find birds.

After visiting the botanical gardens for a whole year, I knew exactly where certain birds would be, which made going out to photograph a specific bird a much easier. Through their area of preference, you can also determine what time would be a better choice to photograph there.

 Later on I also found out that the dead trees in the lake are favourites of certain water birds and they always perch on various branches. While empty hollows in them become premium properties for potential nesting site for parrots. I have been watching same types of parrots use the same hollows for two years in a raw.

Waterbirds like ducks and waterhens are spread all around the lake but the area where the locals feed them; is very easy to get portrait shots of birds. If you sit or lay on the ground for few minutes some might even come close enough that you can take photos with your phone camera.

There are some birds which are not around whole year. Birds like Welcome Swallows, Dusky Woodswallows and Fairy Martins visit at the beginning of spring and stay on for summer. While Musk, Purple Crowned and Little Lorikeets start visiting when the eucalyptus bed starts flowering. There are a lot of different eucalyptus trees around at the garden and they flower with some time gap between them so birds keep moving from one area to the other depending on flowers. 

Honey-eaters like New Holland Honeyeater and Red-wattle bird and Noisy Miners like to hang around the aloe-vera planation when they are flowering. Red-wattle bird, White-plumed Honeyeater, Rainbow Lorikeets and Noisy Miners also feasts on eucalyptus flowers. 

I knew where & when the good light will be.

At the Garden I know where the Sun rises and sets so I can plan my shoot accordingly. If I want to get backlit shots during sunrise or sunset or if I want the light hitting the bird from the front, I know exactly where to be. This combined with the first point helps me in deciding where I have to be to get a photograph I desire.

On a sunny day if I want to achieve the low-key look, I know the patches where I can achieve that easily as depending on the sun’s position there would be dark shadows in those areas and I just have to wait till the bird pops up in the frame.

I always make sure to check my favourite dead trees as those are great to get silhouettes and high key shots during overcast days.

Although I haven’t played it with much yet, but with the help of planner apps one can plan a shoot around moonset/rise too.

I got to know the birds better.

When you watch the same birds all year around, you start to learn more about them and can predict their behaviours too.

In case of Crested Pigeons, where male dances around females and does beautiful fanning of feathers, I can now predict when it will potentially happen during their breeding season. The female is usually feeding on the ground and the male would fly in landing closer to them and would start following them around and would shortly do their display. If you hear them doing their rhythmic calls, you can follow the sound and you may find one doing their display, now to have them facing you while they are doing it is another challenge and only time in the field would improve your chances unless you’re extremely lucky.

At one of the trees, I have watched Red-rumped parrots fight or play (it looks like fighting but could be the juveniles playfully fighting) for two years in a row now. Knowing these kinds of behaviours would give you some good opportunities for action shots.

Another behaviour I have noticed way too many times is honeyeaters and miners having a go at each other, though due to busy surroundings it can get difficult to get a clear shot but when you can anticipate a behaviour you can plan ahead.

Like I explained in the first point, I know where most birds hang out at a given time of the year. And sometimes I can predict their routes, so I just have to wait at their stoping points and figure out the angles from which I would get the better background/foreground. 

Knowing birds would also mean you’ll know when the young ones will hatch, and where you’ll be able to photograph them better. In my case it has always been easier to get baby birds of Swamphen, Coots and Swan cygnets during the morning times due to better lighting at their patches in the lake.

While in case of lorikeets, I have to make sure I wait till they move on to the shorter eucalyptus tress to get eye level shots. At the beginning of spring they feed on the higher trees and slowly starts moving on to the shorter trees once they start flowering. That patch has always given me best results in evenings. The birds become more focused on food and as the sun goes lower in the horizon they get more and more active.

It was easier to get close to birds.

You may have already noticed some tips in the earlier paragraphs about getting closer to the birds, like knowing their paths or sitting still around the area where people feed them. Sitting down is one of my most rewarding way of getting close ups, and a lot of wildlife photographers advise sitting or laying down as that way you come across less threatening to them. I can totally vouch for this.

Like me If you are visiting a local garden, the birds there, are often used to people and they will be comparatively tamer. I also noticed that it was a lot more easier to get closer to them while they were feeding, so often I would sit around the area where a particular bird I want to photograph is feeding. Or in some cases I just stand around a tree long enough so that they get used to me and just don’t worry about me being there.

Lack of time was not an issue.

Photography is a hobby of mine and while I am extremely passionate about it, I work full time so free time is always an issue. Hence photogprahjng local has been a huge advantage for me as some days I have woken up a bit late but I know I can still make it to the area in short time and as I already know where the light and birds will be, I don’t have to fumble around searching for them. 

While somedays where I notice patches of clouds start to appear in the evening, and I can anticipate a colourful sunset, it wouldn’t take me too long to be at the garden and at my desired spot. I have made a few spontaneous trips like these, both in the mornings and the evenings with some beautiful results.

The times when you are feeling lazy but also want to go out, a place nearby will always be an advantage. And if things don’t work out in that session then you wouldn’t loose a lot of time anyway. 

Different seasons provided different photo opportunities with same birds.

While the birds at the botanical garden are limited, the changing seasons gave me different scenarios to photograph them. 

On cold foggy mornings the whole lake turned into this misty landscape from a fantasy movie. These kinds of mornings are great for moody atmospheric photos. Combined it with previous point, if I hadn’t check the weather and just noticed the morning to be foggy, I can still quickly make it there for an impromptu session.

 I always wanted to photograph birds during the rain and this year I managed to get in some photos.

The garden is planned very well, so throughout the year some plants or another are flowering, giving me lots opportunities of photographing same birds in different surroundings.

Through experimenting I discovered the few visual styles I am into.

After photographing same birds over the same spots, I started wondering how to photograph them differently and I begun playing around with compositions and other things.

I started getting photographs of birds’ plumage when they came super-close. Some of their feather details look beautiful and combined with breeding colours they make wonderful abstract type photos. 

In terms of compositions, I started to incorporate some foreground elements, and I really liked the results. Then I started sub-framing the birds at some known spots. But slowly It lead to combining the sub-framing and the use of foreground elements by photographing through the foliage. This meant sometimes I had to rely on manual focus as it was difficult for the camera to find tiny bird through the dense foliage. And the results were very pleasing for me. This is still an ongoing experiment so, I am excited to try out more variations.

The garden also became a place to carry out my potential ideas as it is easier to give them a go there, in case I miss a shot the bird will be there the next day and I won’t regret missing any huge opportunities. This way, I can also write off something that I thought may have been good but the results showed otherwise.

Just like in sports, you can only put to practice what you’ve trained for, all the techniques I have learned through experimenting here, I can easily put to practice at new places I visit now. And through all my experiments I have realised that there are certain style of photos that I enjoy taking the most.

I became a fan of silhouettes and upon playing with editing I concluded that I prefer minimalist black and while silhouettes with strong contrast. A couple of other types of photos I enjoy taking are small bird in landscape or birdscape as Georgina Steytler calls them, and birds photographed through dense foliage which gives these wicked patterns in the frame.

All the photos you’ve seen here have gone through required raw file processing, though nothing has been removed from the frame or added to the frame apart from applying the suitable cropping for the compositions. Hope you have enjoyed reading this, if you have any questions or comment feel free to drop it below or on my instagram. Now that we can travel freely, I am looking forward to creating more posts.