Photographing Birds in Flight

A few years back, I received a handsome tripod as a gift.  I’ve tried repeatedly to use it, but I always seem to point it in the wrong direction.  Bottom line, I don’t want to carry it when I’m out walking.  As it is, I look like a newbie journalist, my many-pocketed vest bulging with stuff I can never find and a camera and pair of binoculars criss-crossed like bullet holsters over the top.

Photographing Birds in the Adirondacks

This year, we thought we knew the trick:  to steal off in a canoe right after breakfast and head to the far end of Elk Lake.  That way we were certain to come upon a great blue heron busy fishing before it was startled off by someone else.  That had worked the year before, after all.

Photographing Birds in Louisiana

“Don’t worry if the feathers are blown.”  The voice over my shoulder belonged to our friend Marie.  In front of us, in the brilliant sun, were scores of great egrets, their feathers a blinding white.  We were looking out over a rookery where egrets gather to practice their rites of spring.  Marie, a professional photographer, was referring to overexposure so great that all detail would be lost.  Though I’d heard the term only once before, I knew I was in for it:  those egrets were white, and the sun was high in a cloudless sky.

This is New York: Upper Broadway, Valentine's Day 2010

Valentine's Day, and a break in the wintry weather brought everyone out.  Hoshi Coupe's window sported hearts for the occasion, and even the lady in the pocket park was bedecked.

Photographing Birds in Winter

The winter season calls for modifications to how you dress, how you handle your equipment and how you approach the picture-making process itself.  -Tim Fitzharris, National Audubon Society Guide to Nature Photography

In winter, even birds that don’t migrate can be hard to find.  On these cold and snowy days, we see little on our walks:  a junco pecking at frozen ground, a crow settled on a high tree limb.  We thrill to spot what turns out to be a mockingbird, hunkered down in branches to escape the wind.