Community post
Editing With Phoblographer - Songbirds
Feathered Friends:
I initially intended this post to cover the techniques involved in photographing songbirds. Instead I'd like to take the opportunity to exhibit a few instances of my bird photography. I've also put together a video that I'll embed in this article. In it, I talk through how I went about editing one of these images, step by step.
Robin. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/5.6, 340mm, 1/640 sec, ISO 800
Having a competent and consistent editing technique can ensure that you get the most out of your images. I find that this is especially important with wildlife photography. Photographing small, fast moving subjects, in changing lighting conditions, can often push the technical limitations of your camera. In these instances, a good editing technique can help you to preserve images that may otherwise be lost to under/overexposure or excessive noise.
Female Chaffinch. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/6.3, 390mm, 1/400 sec, ISO 800
Male Chaffinch. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/6.3, 500mm, 1/400 sec, ISO 800
Photographing wildlife can really be very rewarding. Recent psychological studies have even shown that getting out into nature and birdwatching can be beneficial for your mental health. Small songbirds can make for especially interesting subjects as they are extremely active throughout the course of their day. This makes them perfect, small and erratic targets with which to hone your shooting skills.
Great Tit. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/7.1, 500mm, 1/640 sec, ISO 1250
Blue Tit. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/7.1, 500mm, 1/800 sec, ISO 800
Male Redstart. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/7.1, 500mm, 1/1250 sec, ISO 1600
Female Redstart. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/7.1, 500mm, 1/1000 sec, ISO 1600
Wren. Nikon D750, Sigma 150-600mm C @ f/7.1, 500mm, 1/400 sec, ISO 1000
Embedded below is a video that I made talking through how I edited the male chaffinch photo. It's not a tutorial as such, but rather an image editing walk-through. I hope you find the information in the video useful, let me know in the comments if you'd be interested in similar content in the future.
Chaffinch Lightroom Edit from Alex White on Vimeo.
The Nik Collection plug-ins referenced in the video can be downloaded for free here...
If you've found this article useful then please upvote & follow me for similar content in the future. Also please consider resteeming this blog if you believe it deserves to be shared with the wider community. Cheers everybody : )
All images present in this article are © Alexander White
Replies (22)
nice
Beautiful little birds!
I wish I had the patience to photograph songbirds - they are an elusive target, and never seem to stop moving!
wonderful photos! upped
Thanks for sharing your beautiful pictures and letting us watch as you edit one of them. I love wildlife photography but am still new in the field. I'd love to get a longer lens and be able to get closer to little birds like the ones in your photos.
Thank you
They can be difficult to photograph, but it's fun to see all of the different species out there. I'm glad you liked the pictures.
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the photos and the video. A long lens helps a lot, though some birds are more docile than others. Robins for instance, sometimes allow you to get within a few feet of them before flying off. If you have a garden, then placing bird feeders can also provide you with an opportunity to get some decent shots.
Great pics! Especially the blurred background. Getting the bird in focus with telephoto. Nice.
Upvoted & followed. :)
Thanks, I'm glad you enjoyed the photos.
beautiful little creatures. Great photography:) Thanks for sharing!
Thank you. I'm something of an avid chess player myself, I look forward to seeing more of your chess problems.
Very nice my friend
nice pic dude
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STOPthank you.
You are welcome
You get my 100% vote. This is pure gold. Thanks for the video tutorial. Cheers!!!!!
Thank you, I'm grateful for your vote and I'm glad that you found the video useful.
Lovely shots. You have a relatively high f-stop but the background are beautifully blurred. Do you achieve that by having backgrounds that are simply very far away from the subjects?
Very good question. Depth of field is decided by a number of things. These are primarily, aperture, effective focal length, focus distance (distance from lens to subject), and the subject's distance from the background.
Simply put, to achieve a shallow depth of field you should get your lens objective as close to the subject as you can, and use the largest aperture and longest focal length possible. As you rightly said, you should also attempt to ensure that your subject is as far away from the background as possible.
You're the first person to ask about this, and I may well do a post on this subject in the future. It does get quite technical however when you start talking about things like, the effective field of view and circle of confusion. If I get some time next week though, I may well do a blog in relation to this.
I'm glad you enjoyed the images, and in each instance I was fairly close to the birds, and the backgrounds were sufficiently far enough away so as to be completely obscured. Anyway, thanks again for your question, cheers for now.
Thanks. I always enjoy hearing how images are made. Gives me ideas for other things to try and keeps me from getting stuck in a rut. (I also really appreciate that you post your cameras settings!) I have not yet done much wildlife photography, but just recently got a longer lens for my Fuji X cameras and took it to the zoo to try it out. Very excited about the possibilities!