Maximize Your Success: Leverage Technology

^{Note: This tip was written by guest author Tobie Schalkwyk.}

^{If you’re interested in improving your bird photography skills, check out and download Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets}

One thing about our generation: we live in a fantastic world as far as technology is concerned.

Some of us are only entering it now that things are well-developed and established.

Some of us (like myself) were fortunate to have grown into it from the days of film cameras (and a revolving flash mounted on top of them) to today when (even) DSLRs are being phased out by mirrorless cameras.

If you’re not one of those holding on to film cameras and dark rooms, well, this tip  is for you.

We have such a great repertoire of things at our disposal to make bird photography easier that it’s easy to get so used to them that you overlook them when packing your camera bag!

What am I talking about? Let’s see.

Bird identifying equipment

We may leave this until we return home, but nothing prevents us from carrying it with us – especially when on a bird shoot with company. It makes a great conversation piece during a coffee or lunch break! I’m referring to…

Tip  #1 -

• A bird guide on paper. It is convenient to distinguish look-alike bird species – or any bird species. I never go on a bird shoot without mine. I’d rather not use it than wish I’d had it with me!

• An electronic bird guide on your phone or tablet. My Merlin bird app on my mobile phone has helped me out a million times to identify bird species unknown to me or what I was uncertain about. OK, not really a million, but you know what I mean. There may be a few other apps competing with Merlin, but take my word for it – this free app is an excellent piece of equipment. It is powered by eBird, the world’s most prominent bird sightings, sounds, and photos database. If you can get your image quickly from your camera to your phone, Merlin will identify your bird within a minute or two (well, you have to answer one or two questions first).

You can even record a bird call, and Merlin will identify the species for you. It has a call database of about 400 birds in the U.S. and Canada. As far as I know, it does not identify calls from birds in other countries, but hey, identifying them by image is already a great help!

You may skip your bird guide on paper when you have an equivalent electronic guide, but I like to carry both in my bag. They are from different authors; for some reason, I prefer a photo image on paper to an electronic one.

Bird calling equipment

I know, I know! Some of our green-peace members will immediately start jumping up and down when reading the heading above. Just relax – I’ll add a cautionary note somewhere in this paragraph.

Your electronically generated bird calls may be coming from your electronic bird guide, or they may not be. This is extremely handy when you’re looking for a bird species that is extremely hard to find, and you know which area it occupies.

How to safely use this:

• Ensure you’re not close to nesting birds, especially if this bird you’re calling is one of its known enemies or predators!

• Do not use this if anyone in your company is against it. It is not worth losing a friendship over it.

• Only use it for a few times. If it’s not close by, then so be it.

• If you have a way of boosting the volume, do it!

• Stop using it the moment the called bird makes its appearance!

Lighting Gear

Never underestimate the use of lighting in dark areas or forests. Use your Speedlite if you have one, with or without a snoot.

Or, in a worst-case scenario, use your on-camera flash. You will find that during post-processing, that extra light offers just a little more detail when you lift the shadows in an image than in the same image without a flash.

Tip  #2 - Birds are weirdly fearless of flash. You may sometimes see a slight flick of its wings during the flash, but nothing more. You may, of course, find a bird species where this is not true. But in general, in my experience, that has been true.

Your Mouth

Yes, on the one hand, your mouth is not really ‘equipment’ as such, but it can be a handy tool. In general, birds have a ‘tshhhhhhht, tshhhhhhhhhht’ stress call in times of danger. If you’d like a bird in sight to come closer to investigate, why not try it? It may have the opposite effect, but if you have nothing to lose… 

Summary

I have listed only a few technological tools to not overlook on your bird shoot. I’m sure you can think of one or two more. When you’re on a bird shoot, you want to use every tool at your disposal to produce the optimum shot. Some of them have become so obvious that it’s easy to overlook them.

I hope I have highlighted at least one for you in this tip.

Want more? If you want to learn more about bird photography, and capture beautiful shots of your own, we recommend downloading and printing out Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheets (Special bonus available now!)