Page 10 - Backyard Bird Photography: How to Attract Birds to Your Home and Create Beautiful Photographs

Nanday Parakeet

While using a zoom lens may not give you as sharp an image as a fixed lens, it does give
you the flexibility to zoom in and out to reframe an image and get a different feel to your
shot. For instance, let’s say I’m photographing a Nanday Parakeet at my platform feeder,
and suddenly a group of parakeets flies onto the feeder. After getting my close shots of the
first parakeet at 400mm, I can zoom back to 150mm and capture the group of parakeets.

On another occasion, after photographing a close-up of the Hooded Oriole on the
canyon side of my yard, with the lens set at 400mm from about nine feet away, I zoomed

out to 100mm in order to capture the bird with more of his environment around him in
order to tell a wider story. While the size of the bird in the frame is smaller, the
photograph is evocative because it shows the Mexican marigold flowers behind him and
the trees beyond that, while the bird is perching on the pole, just about to jump over to the
oriole feeder and a drink of sugar water. This juxtaposition between nature and the

suburban comforts of home, while highlighting just how small the oriole actually is in the
overall scheme of things, gives this image its emotional impact. Without the zoom
capability, I would have had to move back at least fifteen feet from the bird and he would
have flown off as I moved back. Also, when you photograph from a longer distance from
your subject, focusing does not work as reliably, so I would rather use a smaller telephoto
setting from closer range than a longer telephoto setting from longer range. Since I am
photographing birds in my garden that are familiar with me and allow me to take their

pictures from close range, I take full advantage of this proximity in order to make my
images as clear and in focus as possible.