Giving up photography (1 Viewer)

photography

The digital revolution is by design making us better lenspeople.To walk out the door and have 86 frames loaded with another 50 in my pocket is freedom I never before experienced .I never took the risks with my Kodacolor because it was wasteful in film and processing I only shot film if it was a pretty sure thing.Now I blast away like a mad anti aircraft gunner.Once in a while I score and come up with a keeper.The truth is that the type on my delete key is fading from a lot of my misses. I can admire the photography of some of the more seasoned "pros"For me nothing carries the warmth and poetry of the good illustrations from Pererson and Sibley.The more you shoot the better you get.
Sam

Being very new to birding, digital gives me the freedom to snap away and confirm identification later. A real bonus is that also I get something to remember the event and even get the odd good photo, even if I discard hundreds of others.

Hi Tannin

It sounds like you had a great trip around this wonderful country and I'm sure your images are not as bad as you believe them to be. We are all our own worse critics and photographers seem to be worse than others.

I agree with many of the above posts and would just like to add a couple of things, some ideas that you may like to implement to help improve your work:

1/ Join a group of like-minded people (or a mentor) who you can go out with on regular photo shoots and afterwards help each other improve technique by discussing your photos and how you shot them. This approach also keeps up your enthusiasm.

2/ Study the photographers which you like and try and find out how the shot was achieved. By trying to get similar results you will learn the techniques they may have used and will improve your work.

3/ Buy a book on technique by a well-recognised professional nature photographer such as John Shaw, Laurie Campbell, etc. Learn correct lighting, composition, depth-of-field and exposure techniques and then practise, practise, practise.

4/ Enrol in a photography workshop and/or photo tour. This will give you hands on experience, expert tuition and often the chance to use professional equipment such as super telephoto lenses and high end cameras that would normally not be available to you. You will also learn "insider" tips, how to overcome "real-life", in-the-field problems and other professional techniques from your tutor/leader and see how other photographers go about getting their images..

Some people have mentioned equipment as playing a big part in getting good images and having the right equipment certainly helps but good technique is much more important.
Professional photographers have years of experience, the time to do the job and are able to justify buying expensive top-of-the-range gear but above all else they also have excellent technique and ability.
If you don't have or can't afford the pro gear necessary to get good closeups from afar, then learn how to use your gear to it's best advantage, learn stalking techniques, how to use hides or how to get the birds to come to you.
Jay's story of his son moving in close to the feeder to get some photos is an excellent example of what I mean (I must ask Jay's permission to use this story during my own photoworkshops) - we are told so often that the only way to get good images is with super telephotos that we forget to use our feet and our cunning.

On my own property on the Atherton Tablelands, I regularly get so close to the birds (or they to me) that I am using only medium or short telephotos to be able to get the entire bird in the frame. Even some of the smallest, flighty, birds such as the Red-backed Fairy Wren, Pardolotes and the small Honeyeaters can be easily photographed with lenses of 300mm or less.
I will attach a couple of examples to show you what I mean. Many of today's P&S digitals have a zoom which covers or is close to this.

If you do want to buy longer telephotos then now is a good time. With the wide acceptence of digital photography and auto-focus cameras and lenses, there are now some excellent bargains of older manual focus SLR cameras & telephoto SLR lenses. Yes, it's true, in the good ol' days we actually did manaully focus our cameras.
Even if you buy or already have a digital SLR, the older manual telephotos can still be used with it and these can be purchased for a fraction of their new costs as people sell them off in favour of P&S digitals.

Don't forget that Michael Morcombe shot those images for his book well before digital & auto everything!

Well, I think you get the idea, so I won't waffle on any longer but try some of those suggestions and I'll guarantee that your images will improve.
Good luck with your future photography.

Kind regards
Peter

www.peter-brown-photographer.com
www.wilderness-images-gallery.com

I actually made the mistake of giving up photography for years because of what Tannin mentioned - why should I bother taking wildlife pictures when the pros take MUCH better ones. Any picture I take of a robin will pale in comparison to even the worst one on some calendar you can buy for $10. However, being older and I hope wiser now, I realize that it much more satisfying to take a nice picture yourself and hang it on the wall. As others have said, the whole point is the challenge and the accomplishment of taking a good picture. I even stay away from having my pictures evaluated and judged for this reason. It is too easy to get discouraged. Improve at your own pace and enjoy yourself!

tom mckinney said:

Well you are a birder.

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Thanks very much

Whhoah! I've been away from here for far too long, and don't think I saw any of those many kind and encouraging replies above. Much good advice there and thankyou all!

I should clarify what I wrote above. I wasn't actually feeling bad about my work. I have a lot of shots I like a lot, and a few that I am utterly delighted with. It was more about feeling ambitious or determined to improve. Let me put it this way.

Imagine you are 14 and you play tennis. You put in a big effort, train hard for a couple of months, and you win your school championship. You feel pretty darn good about yourself, right?

Then someone gives you a ticket to the Wimbeldon final......

Now you see what the people who are really good can do with a tennis ball. Call it a reality check. Chances are you will never be that good. But now that you know how good a tennis player can be, there are things you can do to improve your game. You can train harder, select your shots more intelligently, buy a better racquet if you need one. Maybe you will never win a Wimbeldon Championship, but if you work hard and stick at it ... well ... who knows how far you'll get?

Hmmm .. reading that over, it still doesn't say quite what I mean. I guess I'm really trying to communicate a feeling rather than anything concrete. When I pick up something like Morecombe's Birds of Australia (there are many other examples, of course) I am initially blown away by the quality of the shots, by the sense of wonder they convey. And after a while flipping through, delighting in one great shot after another, I get a subtle tightening in my belly: I'm wishing it was the weekend already and wanting to be out in the field again.

Maybe it's a bit like hearing Eric Clapton play guitar. You might never be as good as Clapton, and you most certainly are a long, long way behind his standard, but there ain't nobody going to stop you getting a whole lot better than you are right now!

Something like that, anyway.

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Letter-winged Kites, Nancy? Nope. Couldn't really get close to where I needed to be for them. So, when I got home, I put my head down and paid some attention to earning some money for a while, bought a 4WD so that I can more sensibly get into the deep outback. (Yeah, you can go almost anywhere with 2WD, but the reality is that city cars just aren't built to cope with outback roads, not on a regular basis. You need something that will take a rough-road hammering year in and year out.)

Next up, when the credit card recovers a bit, I'm going to buy an SLR. Probably whatever Canon replace the 10D with. (It must be getting close to new model time for the 10D.) And get serious about lenses. I expect that will cost about the same as the car did. Some people might think I'm crazy - hell, my tiny old house is practically falling down, there are holes in the carpet, and I have virtually nothing stacked away for retirement, but in the end it all comes down to what you want to do in life. For me, travelling around Australia taking photographs of wildlife is it. Everything else takes second place.

Meanwhile, I'm getting away every chance I can with the Swarovski and the Coolpix. Amongst other things over the last year or so, I've learned that a large part of getting great pictures is simply spending the time. The more time you spend in the bush wiith the scope over your shoulder, the more birds come your way. The more times you click the shutter, the better your chances of something really special.

The single most significant thing I could improve at the moment, I think, is the speed at which I can set up for a shot. The Nikon/Swarovski combination is great in many ways, but I can only reduce the spot bird/remove camera/aquire bird/focus/replace camera/frame/press shutter cycle so far. Especially when you take that terrible Nikon shutter delay into account! I have no idea how many wonderful birds I've just missed out on because I'm too slow to get the rig organised. Lots! And yet, the faster you move, the greater the chance you'll spook the bird!

Anyway, sometime in the reasonably near future (this time next year, maybe) I'll switch to an SLR rig instead. Is the loss of raw resolving power worth the trade-off of much greater speed-to-first-shot? We will see.

Larry Lade said:

I think taking your own photo of a bird gives one a certain "bond" with that bird.

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My feeling too.

Birds are often very difficult to photograph and even when I have taken a good one of a particular species I'm always striving for better.

I keep a set of folders on my PC, one for each species I have photographed. Even if the photo is out of focus and complete rubbish, if the bird can be semi-identified from the photo it goes in if it's the best I've done for that species, until I get a decent picture. Since tits and finches are common visitors to my garden, the titographs and finchographs are much much better than the warble-o-graphs and treecreeperographs! For some species I keep several pics because they show birds in different poses, in flight, with different plumage, juveniles, etc. It is a real challenge to try to improve on the pics for each species, and great fun!

This year the local birds I have photographed, but really want to do a whole lot better, are bullfinch, chiffchaff, female greater spotted woodpecker (very shy!), magpie (surprisingly, lots of them around but never seem to quite capture their colours right!), tree sparrow and sparrowhawk. These are the targets over the next season!! Looking forward to trying, for the first time, to photograph fieldfare and redwing this winter.

The bird books are great and a real inspiration (my wife got me Paul Sterry's Collins Complete British Birds Photoguide for a fiver this week from a bookclub - excellent photography!!) but I still much prefer my technically inferior pics, as I've had to work for them!!

When I first started digiscoping,I had 3 targets.1 a decent Heron pic,(the main reason I took up digiscoping) 2 A reasonable Swallow image,and 3 I wanted to capture a seal shot in our local bay.The latter I had to wait 15mths for,as I was not lucky enough to spot any seals when I was out and about.Every other man and his dog did,but not me,but a couple of weeks ago,there was a seal basking on the sandbank.It was very windy,but did mange a reasonable image,which the local shop has displayed in their window,so all visitors can see what our little village can offer in the way of wildlife.
So now I need new challenges.Collecting photos of birds I do not have,decent ones ie,and I would like to try some macro photography,but I just like to keep improving.Having said that,if I am reasonable happy with the image I have taken,then everything is okay,but the Gallery sets a challenge,as the standards are so high.
But when I think back to my first photo attempts,and now think what I have learned from mistakes,and more importantly,what I have learnt by help from other Forum members,thankyou to all who answer my questions and queries, I feel quite happy about things.I am certainly more aware of the birds in the area,as I am always looking for a good photo opportunity,just wish it was not so windy and wet in this part of the country.

Neil Grubb said:

I keep a set of folders on my PC, one for each species I have photographed. Even if the photo is out of focus and complete rubbish, if the bird can be semi-identified from the photo it goes in if it's the best I've done for that species, until I get a decent picture.

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I am absolutely the same as you Neil. I also keep a set of folders for each species plus any other wildlife including Moths, Bugs, you name it. I have also produced a Spreadsheet with Hyperlinks to the best photo of each species I have captured.

I am up to 250 photos of which only three of them are not mine but birds seen by me but photos taken by someone else. Some of them are rubbish but are the only record shots I have and some a very good with a mixture of shots in between those. I am always striving to better the shot I have of each species plus obviously trying for those I don't have.

I am never going to be a very good photographer as my eyes are not good enough but at least it gives me the pleasure of going out in the field and having the possibility of one day possibly getting the shot every one wants.

I nearly had that shot the other day when in Northumberland with Michael Frankis. I was a split second away from getting a shot of a Red Backed Shrike about to swallow a Cricket. I took the shot just as it had disappeared down its throat. A split 2nd earlier and I would have had the shot I have always wanted.

It will come like it will come to anyone that keeps trying. In my opinion if you take photography too seriously then you will most likely fall short of what you want to achieve. Sure there will always be those that excel at anything but most of us won't achieve those dizzy heights. We have to be content with our lot and make the best of what talents we have (or not as the case may be).

I'm the same, but I take it a little bit further. In addition to a folder for each species, I set up four other folders - one for each print size I can print a shot at - 13x19, 8.5x11, 5x7, and one I call "Quality_Computer" for on-screen suitable shots only. The "chaff" go in the normal folders for ID purposes. Each well composed, sharp shot I take goes into the appropriate print folder. So the 13x19 folder contains the sharpest, full-frame, shots. A copy of them (cropped and scaled) goes in each smaller size folder, along with the shots that don't quite make the grade for the larger size but are good enough resolution for the smaller size. Seems to work very well, at least for me, but I tend to print a lot of shots for sales.

Reader: You're lucky. Now you've still got something to do next weekend

Interesting thread!
For years Lin and I made videos of all the rare birds we twitched: after a bit we started selling copies as an annual compilation. We did the best we coiuld with what we could afford, and took as our 'code' not to disturb tired migrants or nesting birds by getting too close. We got all kinds of pathetic criticism about the quality of our product, which used to annoy us, since a whole years-worth of rare birds (usually 50+) sold for £10: the cost of six still photos! But at EVERY twitch there was ALWAYS a couple of still photographers getting closer and closer with HUGE tp lenses, usually scaring away the bird (Remember the Suffolk Ivory Gull?) I reckon you have to achieve a realistic balance if you're taking the photos for yourself: Lin and I still LOVE looking at our videos (particularly the pelagic one!) not because they show every detail of feathering / soft parts etc, but because they are so evocative of days when we 'connected' with some wonderful birds!