The Skills You Need to Develop to Become a Good Bird and Wildlife Photographer and the Fort DeSoto Spring IPT and Cheap ITF Workshop Announced

What’s Up?

I am home and still feeing great despite 2 1/2 hours of sleep on Thursday night. I can say that I probably did close to 20 hours of work stock-piling new blog blogs post to keep the streak going while and if I am away. Again, huge thanks for all the positive messages.

I finished and scheduled this blog post at 9:46pm on Friday night and was headed to bed at 9:47pm. It took about two hours in all to assemble it.

Gear Questions and Advice

Too many folks attending BAA IPTs and dozens of the folks whom I see in the field, and on BPN, are–out of ignorance–using the wrong gear, especially when it comes to tripods and more especially, tripod heads… Please know that I am always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

The Streak: 330!

Today’s blog post marks a totally insane, irrational, illogical, preposterous, absurd, completely ridiculous, unfathomable, silly, incomprehensible, what’s wrong with this guy?, makes-no-sense, 330 days in a row with a new educational blog post. There should be no end in sight until my big South America trip next fall. Or not… As always-–and folks have been doing a really great job recently–-please remember to use our B&H links for your major gear purchases. For best results use one of our many product-specific links; after clicking on one of those you can continue shopping with all subsequent purchases invisibly tracked to BAA. Your doing so is always greatly appreciated. Please remember: web orders only. And please remember also that if you are shopping for items that we carry in the new BAA Online Store (as noted in red at the close of this post below) we would appreciate your business.

The Skills You Need to Develop to Become a Good Bird and Wildlife Photographer

Here is my list of the skills that you need to master to improve your bird, nature, and wildlife photography. They are presented immediately below in the approximate order of difficulty with the most difficult to master at the top and the easiest to master at the bottom. All as you might expect are my typically humble opinions. An interesting exercise would be for you to think about how these skills rank in difficulty for you. If you do, and come up with something interesting, please feel free to share your thoughts with us by leaving a comment.

The Skills Needed to Become a Successful Bird, Wildlife, and Natural History Photographer, presented in the the approximate order of difficulty:

• 1-Creating sharp images.
• 2-Being able to see the great situations and avoid the lousy ones; this skill can best be developed by checking out the background.
• 3-And then being able to choose the very best perspective.
• 4-Mastering your camera’s AF system so that you can create effectively designed images.
• 5-Understanding what makes pleasing, dramatic, moody, exciting, and/or artistically successful images with major contest potential, and most importantly, images that make you happpy.
• 6-Understanding the fine points of head angle and subject to imaging sensor orientation.
• 7-Understanding sun angle.
• 8-Getting the right exposure
• 9-Post Processing Skills
• 10-Understanding the effects of wind direction, wind speed, and sky conditions on bird photography.

If you think that I left anything out…

If you think that I left anything out, something perhaps that you have trouble with, please let me know by leaving a comment.

Resources for…

#s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and tons more that will never appear on the blog or on BPN: Sign up for as many BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tours as possible.

#s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9: The BIRDS AS ART Blog Free! 🙂

#s 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8: The Art of Bird Photography, the original ABP in soft cover. And on Bird Photographer’s.Net (BPN).

#s 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, & 9: The Art of Bird Photography II, ABP II: 916 pages, 900+ images, on CD only.

Buy the Two-book Bundle, ABP and ABP II, and save $10. Together they make for a monumental bird photography education.

#6 specifically: Head Angle Fine Points in the Education Resources Forum on Bird Photographer’s.Net (BPN) Free to all who register. Annual membership (40/year)

#9: Digital Basics, the DPP 4 RAW Conversion Guide, the Professional Post-Processing Guide, and the Post-Processing Instructional Videos.

#10: This item was added to the list midday on 8 October.

What I Learned on My First BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-Tour

From Rob Snell via e-mail with this Subject Line: WHAT A GREAT WEEK! (You will learn about Rob and see two of the excellent images he made on the IPT in Sunday’s blog post.)

Hey Artie Bob/Boss,

It was so nice to meet you and learn SO MUCH! I had a blast! I have a ton of work to do, and 5,000 shots to work through.

Here is are the three most important things that I learned.

#1 EXPOSE TO THE RIGHT — My brother and I have a dog supply business. Part of my job of web marketing is making videos. I’ve learned that it’s better to slightly underexpose your videos than to risk blowing out the highlights. This is not so with still photography! With RAW it’s correct for the histogram to go halfway into the last box on the right. When the exposure is just right, I don’t have to spend so much time trying to save it in post. Now I check my histograms every few moments.

#2 NAIL BOTH THE EXPOSURE AND THE SUN ANGLE and , NAIL THE IMAGE — Most of my photography involves creating videos of hunting dogs, running and hunting just after sun-up, but I do shoot some stills also. I don’t have a lot of control over my position because I’m walking behind guys with shotguns who are walking after the dogs. On the IPT I learned that sun angle is a big, big deal. Looking back I realize that almost every KEEPER photo I’ve ever taken was when I got the exposure right (within 1/3 stop of perfect), *AND* when the dogs were running back towards us into the light.

#3 TAKE FEWER PICTURES — Sometimes I waste time creating under-exposed, poorly lit images that have to be transferred, ingested, curated, backed up, and ultimately deleted. If the light’s not right, don’t take the shot. If the light is right, let ‘er rip!

Peace out — Rob

My Thoughts

I loved the “Boss” reference as I just finished reading the recently released version of Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage (Apr 28, 2015) by Alfred Lansing and Nathaniel Philbrick. The crew called Shackleton “boss. The Artie Bob reference arose from a mutual friendship with Joe Mac Hudspeth Jr. I asked Rob if he knew Joe Mac because they were both from Mississippi and both were involved in photographing hunters. He did. Joe Mac gave me my redneck name, “Artie-Bob.”

I learned that Rob was fast and made incredibly sharp images. I also learned that he had not clue as to getting the right exposure. We fixed that pretty easily. Again, lots more on that in tomorrow’s blog post. Lastly I learned that my first impression was spot-on: Rob was a helluva nice guy.

DeSoto in spring is rife with tame and attractive birds. From upper left clockwise to center: breeding plumage Dunlin, dark morph breeding plumage Reddish Egret displaying, breeding plumage Laughing Gull/front end vertical portrait, breeding plumage Laughing Gull with prey item, Laughing Gull on head of Brown Pelican, screaming Royal Tern in breeding plumage, Royal Terns/pre-copulatory stand, Laughing Gulls copulating, breeding plumage Laughing Gull/tight horizontal portrait, Sandwich Tern with fish, and a really rare one, White-rumped Sandpiper in breeding plumage, photographed at DeSoto in early May.

Fort DeSoto Spring IPT/April 19-22, 2017 (meet & greet at 2pm on Wednesday April 19 followed by an afternoon session) through the full day on Saturday April 22. 3 1/2 DAYs: $1599. Limit 10. I will be offering small group (Limit 3) Photoshop sessions on Sunday afternoon and Monday morning if necessary. Details on that TBA.

Fort DeSoto is one of the rare locations that might offer great bird photography 365 days a year. It shines in spring. There will Lots of tame birds including breeding plumage Laughing Gull and Royal and Sandwich Terns. With luck, we will get to photograph all of these species courting and copulating. There will be American Oystercatcher and Marbled Godwit plus sandpipers and plovers, some in full breeding plumage. Black-bellied Plover and Red Knot in stunning breeding plumage are possible. There will be lots of wading birds including Great and Snowy Egrets, both color morphs of Reddish Egret, Great Blue, Tricolored and Little Blue Heron, Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, and killer breeding plumage White Ibis. Roseate Spoonbill and Wood Stork are possible and likely. We should have lots of good flight photography with the gulls and terns and with Brown Pelican. Nesting Least Tern and nesting Wilson’s Plover are possible.

We will, weather permitting, enjoy 7 shooting sessions. As above, our first afternoon session will follow the meet and greet at 2pm on Wednesday April 19. For the next three days we will have two daily photo sessions. We will be on the beach early and usually be at lunch (included) by 11am. We will have three indoor sessions. At one we will review my images–folks learn a ton watching me choose my keepers and deletes–why keep this one and delete that one? The second will be a review of your images so that I can quickly learn where you need help. For those who bring their laptops to lunch I’d be glad to take a peek at an image or three. Day three will be a Photoshop session during which we will review my complete workflow and process an image or two in Photoshop after converting them in DPP. Afternoon sessions will generally run from 4:30pm till sunset. We photograph until sunset on the last day, Saturday, April 22. Please note that this is a get-your-feet and get-your-butt wet and sandy IPT. And that you can actually do the whole IPT with a 300 f/2.8L IS, a 400 f/4 ID DO lens with both TCs, or the equivalent Nikon gear. I will surely be using my 500 II as my big glass and have my 100-400 II on my shoulder.

DeSoto in spring is rife with tame and attractive birds. From upper left clockwise to center: Laughing Gull in flight, adult Yellow-crowned Night-Heron, copulating Sandwich Terns, Roseate Spoonbill, Great Egret with reflection, Short-billed Dowitcher in breeding plumage, American Oystercatcher, breeding plumage Royal Tern, white morph Reddish Egret, and Snowy Egret marsh habitat shot.

What You Will Learn

You will learn to approach free and wild birds without disturbing them, to understand and predict bird behavior, to identify many species of shorebirds, to spot the good situations, to understand the effects of sky and wind conditions on bird photography, to choose the best perspective, to see and understand the light, to get the right exposure every time after making a single test exposure, and to design pleasing images by mastering your camera’s AF system. And you will learn how and why to work in Manual mode (even if you are scared of it).

The group will be staying at the Red Roof Inn, St. Petersburg: 4999 34th St. North, St Petersburg, FL 33714. The place is clean and quite inexpensive. Please e-mail for room block information. And please call Jim or Jennifer at 863-692-0906 to register. All will need to purchase an Annual Pass early on Tuesday afternoon so that we can enter the park at 6am and be in position for sunrise opportunities. The cost is $75, Seniors $55. Tight carpools will be needed and will reduce the per person Annual Pass costs. The cost of three lunches is included. Breakfasts are grab what you can on the go, and dinners are also on your own due to the fact that we will usually be getting back to the hotel at about 9pm. Non-photographer spouses, friends, or companions are welcome for $100/day, $350 for the whole IPT.

Why Join an IPT?

For many folks, hands-on, in-the-field instruction is the very best way for them to learn to improve their skills… To see some early spring DeSoto images, click here.

BIRDS AS ART Fort DeSoto Spring In-the-Field Cheap Meet-up Workshop (ITFW): $99

Join me on the morning of Sunday, April 22 for 3-hours of photographic instruction at Fort DeSoto Park. Beginners are welcome. Lenses of 300mm or longer are recommended but even those with 70-200s should get to make some nice images. Teleconverters are always a plus.

You will learn the basics of digital exposure and image design, autofocus basics, and how to get close to free and wild birds. We should get to photograph a variety of wading birds, shorebirds, terns, and gulls. This inexpensive morning workshop is designed to give folks a taste of the level and the quality of instruction that is provided on BIRDS AS ART Instructional Photo-tours. I hope to meet you there.

To register please call Jim or Jennifer during weekday business hours at 863-692-0906 with a credit card in hand to pay the nominal registration fee. Your registration fee is non-refundable. You will receive a short e-mail with instructions, gear advice, and the exact meeting place one week before the event.

Please Remember to use my Affiliate Links and to Visit the New BAA Online Store 🙂

To show your appreciation for my continuing efforts here, we ask, as always, that you get in the habit of using my B&H affiliate links on the right side of the blog for all of your photo and electronics purchases. Please check the availability of all photographic accessories in the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store, especially the Mongoose M3.6 tripod head, Wimberley lens plates, Delkin flash cards and accessories, and LensCoat stuff.

As always, we sell only what I have used, have tested, and can depend on. We will not sell you junk. We know what you need to make creating great images easy and fun. And we are always glad to answer your gear questions via e-mail.

I would of course appreciate your using our B&H affiliate links for all of your major gear, video, and electronic purchases. For the photographic stuff mentioned in the paragraph above we, and for everything else in the new store, we, meaning BAA, would of course greatly appreciate your business. Here is a huge thank you to the many who have been using our links on a regular basis and those who will be visiting the New BIRDS AS ART Online Store as well.

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Typos

In all blog posts and Bulletins, feel free to e-mail or to leave a comment regarding any typos or errors. Just be right 🙂