Page 18 - Backyard Bird Photography: How to Attract Birds to Your Home and Create Beautiful Photographs

own garden, you can experiment with the backgrounds that your plants give you, and then

combine these colors with the plumage of the birds that visit your yard to create some
exciting photographs of your own.

Two examples of this type of composition occurred when I was producing the
hummingbird head shots in 2009. I realized that the Allen’s Hummingbird had a
combination of brown and green colors in his plumage, and I also noticed that the fuchsia
contained red flowers and green leaves. So one day, I tried to position the bird in front of

the fuchsia flowers and, presto, I had a study in red, green, and brown. On another
occasion, I decided to split the background into two areas of color, pink from the flowers
in the top left, and green from the foliage in the bottom right. Into this setting, I placed the
Allen’s Hummingbird with his green feathers, orange-red gorget, and white-and-brown
chest. Photographs like these are not accidents. They require careful planning of both the
backgrounds and the position of the birds when they move into the frame of the

viewfinder.

Golden-crowned Sparrow