Welcome back to the channel everybody. In today's video
I'm gonna start a new series called "I'm getting destroyed
by mosquitoes".
In today's video, I'm going to start a new series that I want to
call "What's Ruining Your Bird Photography?"
and in each one of these videos I'll talk about things that are
gear related, technique related, post-processing
related, all centered around issues that I
have with my bird photography. And issues that some of you
have been having. Many of you have been emailing
me with a few issues you've been having. And I'm happy
to help if I can, I'm not an expert in troubleshooting by any means
But I think I've had enough issues with my own photography
that I can kinda figure out what's happening.
I think when our photos aren't coming out the way we want them to
The first thing we jump to is that it's something wrong with the camera
or something wrong with the lens. But in most cases I think
it is user error. So today I'm going to share with you
the issues that I encounter the most with my photography. And the ones that
you guys have been emailing me about over the last few months. I'll take the
most frequent ones and I'll put them into this video.
And the first one is definitely the one that I get asked about the most
and definitely the one that I encounter the most in the field.
And that's... Oh that mosquito got me good. And that's..
Heat Distortion. If you're unfamiliar with heat distortion,
to put it simply, as the sun rises in the morning
it'll heat that cold air and create a shimmering effect
You'll commonly see this over roads, fields,
and open water bodies. And when it's strong it's
fairly obvious to notice it with your naked eye.
But when it's not that strong, something it's just a little bit of heat shimmer,
that's where the real problem arises, because you may
not see it with the naked eye. And what's going to happen is
you're going to take a bunch of photos that day, and when you get home and you blow them up
on your computer screen, that's when you'll notice you have that heat shimmer.
And if you photograph on a day with a lot of heat distortion
there's no real way to fix that in post.
You pretty much end up with a soft, blurry, almost like out-of-focus image.
You can't really fix while you're editing
so try to avoid it in the field at all costs.
So a few tips that you can do to avoid it in the field is
to.... I'm getting distracted by birds like always.
The first tip is to shoot early
in the morning or late in the afternoon
That's usually when it's cooler, the next tip is to come
into the forest. It's usually shaded, it's colder,
and I almost never experience heat distortion in a forest
the only time it really happens is when I'm on the edge
Which totally makes sense. But when it's
9 or 10 am and you notice that there's a bit of heat shimmer
happening over a field or something, just move your way into a forest
where it's colder and you'll
definitely be able to continue shooting throughout the day. Tip number 3
is to photograph on an overcast day.
Pretty self-explanatory, overcast, not as much sun
so air isn't rapidly being heated up, so
overcast days are great. And lastly, I would say that you
need to get closer to your subject, but
on days when heat distortion is really bad
it usually doesn't matter, so
if you remember my Turkey Vulture video, that turkey vulture came
in really close but I was in a field, and I think about
80% of my photos suffered from heat distortion. So I only had
a select few that I guess the wind was blowing at the right time
and I ended up getting a few shots.
It's probably the worst thing to experience when you get
home after a shoot and just see that most of your images are ruined.
But now that you're aware of the issue, you'll be able to hopefully
see it in the field and avoid it. Alright so let's move
on to the second thing that might be ruining your bird photos,
and this is kind of a weird one, I discovered this by accident
but it's Image Stabilization. So I'll give
you a little backstory, A few years ago I was on a beach and I was
photographing Brown Pelicans, so a huge subject
and there was a lot of wind, which allowed for the pelicans
to move in super slowly. So I really didn't need that
high of a shutter speed, but there was enough light that I was using
over 1/3200th of a second. And so I
went home, I checked the images on my computer
and majority of them were just slightly out of focus.
And I was fairly new to bird photography at the time
so I really didn't understand what was happening, I was using a high
enough shutter speed and I was using good technique
so it was really confusing until on a forum I saw
somebody mention you need to turn off Image Stabilization
at high shutter speeds.
So the next day I went out, turned off image stabilization and I got
way more keepers. So what happens is, it's kinda like
the lens is trying to compensate for movement or
shake that isn't actually there. And this is going to be different for
everybody, at what shutter speed you want to turn it on or off.
For me, I really only turn it on when I get
down to those really low shutter speeds
And so far, it's been working great. If you're skeptical
about it, just try it out for a shoot or two
and see if you can get sharper results. Because I think it's ruining
a lot more photos than people think. So if you ever have any
unexplained motion blur in your photos, like if your
subject was perched and you were stable, you weren't moving
and you're using a high enough shutter speed, but you still got motion blur
that's probably because of the image stabilization.
And it's cray because you get punished
for being stable, and not moving too much, but
you have the image stabilization on which is counteracting
everything you're doing. So it's pretty rude, but,
it's definitely an issue that I've encountered quite a bit
and since turning it off,
I've definitely noticed a much much higher keeper rate
for a lot of my photos. The next two issues
that I want to talk about have to do with colors and editing.
And the first issue is Color Cast.
I often encounter color cast when I'm in a forest like this
So picture a bird with a white belly or a light gray belly
landing on a branch.
All the light that's coming through the forest is going to hit the foliage
underneath the bird, and create this color cast on the belly of the
bird. So a bird that's supposed to have a white or gray belly, is actually
going to have a muddy, yellowish green belly. Which really isn't
that appealing. And you might not notice it as much on the RAW
but once you start upping your contrast, and your
saturation, and your vibrance, you're going to start
introducing more of that color into the belly of the bird and
it just becomes so unappealing after you've edited your image.
So it's a really easy fix, all you have to do
is figure out the color that's color casting onto your bird.
And go into Photoshop and just create a layer that
reduces that color's saturation.
The most common one is green,
so I'll just go into Photoshop, create
a Hue/Saturation layer that removes some of that green
and then just paint in on the belly of the bird wherever it's being affected.
So that's such an easy fix and it makes such a big difference
to the overall image. When your colors aren't quite right
it never really sits well when you're looking at a photo
So it's one that's often overlooked, I see a lot of photos on
Facebook and Instagram that have these color casts, and you might
not want to correct them, and that's fine, but if you're trying to get accurate
colors for your bird, it's definitely something you want to look into.
The next color related issue is to adjust your white balance
and your tint before you start editing. A great example
I like to use is when I was in Ecuador, I was in
dark jungles with a lot of greenery. So the camera
would often choose a cool white balance, so introducing a lot
of blues. And it would usually shift
towards magenta because of all the greenery. So my
colors were so off unless I changed those two things.
So if you're ever editing your images and you're realizing that you're
struggling to get the right colors, and the colors always look off
it's likely due to the white balance and the tint
So I would go into that, just reset your image, and start editing those
two things first. Adjust both of those
to the point where your image starts to look more natural
Pay attention to the whites, to the blacks, and to the greens in the image
That's going to really help pin point the right white balance and tint.
And then once those are figured out, then you can start editing
your image and adjust from there. It's just if you're
starting with really bad colors to begin with, it's kinda hard to level in
everything else. So those are all the tips that I
have for you today on some of the issues that I encounter
with my photography, and that some of you have been encountering.
So I hope it was helpful, if you have any questions,
leave them down below and I'll see you in the next video.
Happy Birding!