When Photographing Birds In Water – What Questions You Must Answer

^{Note: This tip comes from Photzy’s 10 Bird Photography Cheat Sheet Snap Cards.}

When photographing birds in the water, you must ask yourself: Are the water reflections creating a mood and assisting in the composition or merely creating excessive contrast that distracts from the subject?

This photograph of the bald eagle is a fantastic use of reflection. Do you like the composition? Can you feel the energy? Could this shot be improved?

Quick Tip: A reflection often dramatically changes the composition. In the moment, capture the scene as best you can. Later, examine your composition options in post-production. Could a thoughtful edit finalize the shot of the bald eagle from being just okay into becoming a ‘WOW’ image?

Pulling the photo of the bald eagle into the Adobe Camera Raw processor and selecting the Crop tool, we can see that the placement of the subject and reflection are not at their best. The frame is very heavy on the right, and the negative space on the left adds no drama or story. This action shot would have been better if captured as a vertical. But we can fix that.

Here, we can see that with a carefully constructed crop of the original, the head of the eagle (both on the bird and in the reflection) is now in the sweet spots for the Rule of Thirds. This crop also balances out the distribution of the visual weight.

Here is the revised final photograph. Take note of the increased drama compared to the original. Look how the reflection now becomes a key component to both the story and the composition.

Here is another example: only this shot has the opposite problem. The background is so tight to the subject that the water as a location becomes obscured, and there isn’t any natural composition flowing through the image.

Let’s see what happens if we create more background. Select the entire frame and then reverse the selection. Go to the Edit drop-down menu and select ‘canvas size.’ Increase the canvas to create a sufficient amount of background for better placement of the bird and reflection.

Keeping the same selection, switch to the Background Layer, go to ‘Fill,’ and set the drop-down menu to ‘Content Aware/Normal/100%. Click okay.

The final photograph is once again in a more harmonious balance, and the additional water provides better context to the reflection, story, and surroundings.

A Final Example

Quick Tip: Keep an eye on the color and contrast of your bird subject against the reflections in the water. You want to ensure the bird and Shadow have enough contrast and color separation so they don’t ‘disappear’ into the background.

This last example photo shows poor separation between the subject and background.

Several ways in post-production could improve this shot. I will move the bird and Shadow to a better spot within the frame that creates the necessary contrast.

First, I selected the bird and Shadow.

I created a new layer and pasted my copied bird and Shadow to a better location with enough contrast to separate the bird from the water.

I then returned to the Background layer and reselected the bird and Shadow. I then go to the Edit menu and do a Content Aware Fill. This action smooths over the water, but I still have some semi-transparent artifacts.

In my new composition, I cropped the photo to place the bird in the correct location for the Rule of Thirds. I then used the Clone tool to clean up the telltale artifacts in the water. Finally, I selected the new bird layer and applied a slight Blur.

Here is my final image. Take notice how the bird and Shadow are now dominant in the frame. They don’t blend into the background as much.

Conclusion

When planning your shot, look for separation of the subject from the background, and if the bird subject blends into the background, use post-production techniques to create separation.

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!)