David Tipling
David Tipling is renowned for his artistic images of birds. He is the author or commissioned photographer for many books. He will lead a tour with Zoom Photo Tours in November. See davidtipling.com and www.norfolkphotosafaris.com
Keep an eye on ISO
Pumping up the ISO to achieve a high shutter speed is not always necessary when photographing in bright light. Too high an ISO can affect colour saturation and lose fine feather detail in birds. So, if you use Auto ISO think about keeping the upper limit lower than the camera’s default. Often our cameras will automatically choose a higher ISO than is required and although de-noise software does a good job of cleaning the image up, it is better to obtain the best quality you can when you shoot. These crab plovers (right) were photographed in the Seychelles in bright tropical light at 1/1250sec. This was fast enough to freeze their wings and at an aperture of f/7.1 to ensure I had enough depth of field for both to be in focus. I only needed an ISO of 200 because of the intensity of light.
Early and late
Birds in countries with hotter temperatures than our own are often most active at dawn and then sometimes again later in the day. Being out as the sun comes up can be the most rewarding time of day for photography. If you are in a location where the light can become quite harsh by mid-morning then getting up early to make the most of that good light is essential. These spotted owlets photographed at Bharatpur in northern India frequently roosted by day in the same place, often disappearing down a hole during the heat of the day. But frequently at dawn they would sit warming up in the early morning sun, which is when this image was taken. The early bird catches the worm.
Behaviour
Anticipating when something interesting might happen is a skill learnt over time, but a bit of background research can go a long way to assist this process. These displaying sarus cranes were photographed early in the morning at Bharatpur in northern India. They were standing side by side feeding, and when one stood up erect and the other then stood and started to point towards the sky, I knew from experience that the other bird would then call and lift its wings. A behaviour that is quite fleeting but as I knew what was about to happen, I was already focused and fired the shutter as soon as it happened. Whether it is duetting cranes or perhaps a duck bobbing its head before take-off, watching for the signals birds give off can give you that extra second or two to capture the action.