What Pros Keep QUIET! | The UNFILTERED TRUTH of Bird Photography

One of things I love about wildlife photography is the serendipity part of it. Never know what you can get.

In 1997, back in the day when I was working as a professional, using transparency film, I had loaded my car with all of my images in preparation for a move to a different location. It was locked and in the apparently secure garage of my apartment building. A short time later I discovered that the car had been stolen, and when it was eventually discovered, all of my images: that is about 16 years' worth of transparencies from both work and personal shooting, covering travel round the world and meeting and marrying my wife, had been burnt on the side of the road. I was in tears... When digital came along, I quickly embraced it for, amongst other benefits, the ability to make multiple back-ups of my images. BTW, I thought that I had lost all of my images, but a couple of years ago, I found an old box with a bunch of reject and duplicates that at least gave me back some images from that period. I had them professionally scanned and they are still prized for memories of that period in my life.

A bird feeder with seeds, a perch to photograph birds (near the bird feeder) and a photo blind in your backyard. Sometimes that's all you need and it's what I used and will continue to use.

The real secret is to be there. Watching videos is useful to a point . Looking at other people’s photos is helpful. This helps form a personal perspective on what you like.and builds a muscle memory in our brain.Then try to create your own personal versions of what you like where you are not where you would like to be. Now bad weather is not always a reason to stay away from photography in fact I live in Manchester England . I never get great light normally cloud over cast and rain are part of the picture not a problem to it. I really am impressed with you guys blogs and tips. So a big thank you . Some of my best photos are not always my sharpest or most planned out . What they tell me is to rethink what I am doing and give me alternatives for bad weather low light taking photos at a distance and most of all enjoying turning them into something interesting by just taking photos. This is what drives me do you see yourself in that comment. I hope so .

We hope you guys enjoy the show! Did you enjoy these little tips????

Thanks you guys. This video makes me feel normal. Seems no matter how many shots I take, sometimes I only come home with one or two keepers. And other times nothing, because reasons. 😄 Being out in the fresh air makes all the difference in the adventure.

Great to see the acknowledgement that an image cannot be captured 'in camera' but that perfection is achieved only by adapting what is initially captured.

I despise set-ups (not against anyone using them, I just despise them) I prefer Wild Animals/Birds doing wild things - YES it's way more challenging then setting up to get "THE " shot - but that's what keeps me going - it's the "chase" Wildlife Photography is just like hunting to me, just with a different weapon.

Thank you for making this video and sharing these stories. It is good to remember that even the professionals take thousands of photos and may only get a handful of ones that they are willing to work with.

Another great episode of The Bird Photography Show. You need to plan on making mistakes in the field - with malfunctioning equipment or getting lost or not having ideal conditions. You can acquire great images in the field but editing images is essential. Proper editing is essential in bird photography. I've been using your prosets for quite sometime and it saves time in the editing of RAW images.It is the beginning of my editing process. I recently got your brush sets and I am getting a greater understanding of the value of using masks and brushes to take the image to the next level. I've also used your master class in workflow Jan and this is extremely helpful in the editing process. I plan to get your ebooks of processing Glenn. It's like you said in the video: everyone has a different style and a different idea on the perfect image. I can take steps from each of your editing processes and add them to my workflow to take my images to the next level. I appreciate each of you sharing your experiences to make bird photography a better experience and ways to take our images to the next level.

Loved this episode. Your honesty is endearing and empowering. Keep it up!

Cool stories from behind the scenes. Thanks for sharing and for the tweaks.

Great video as usual guys :) I love "set-up" photography, as well as totally natural shooting in the field :) Although, sometimes even in the field, I might move a weed or two out of the way, or move a few leaves, etc.

07:42 Yes! And, even though I noticed while still having a few hours left on the location, those very good birdphoto chances never reproduced themselves... as they almost never does.

For SDCard safety you can use the read/write lock switch to read-only to "mark" the SDCard as "do no delete". I also use a USB SDCard reader but it is a dual reader so I can plug it into my smatrphone and use some sync tools app like FolderSync on Android (such app may exist on iPhone) so I can continue to work on my main SDCard without fear and then use the secondary SDCard for whatever I want and plug it into computer back home, also when I extract SDCard from the camera I always lock it read-only before inserting into any SDCard reader / computer to reduce the risk of bad action.

Can you make a video discussing the different ways to make money in wildlife photography/videography?

I lost all my data from the eclipse…I was able to view all the raw and jpegs once and thought they were ok. Exhausted from weeks of prep, no sleep the night before and strung out from the road, I went to sleep. Next day, I looked at five that I marked as favorites and cried after viewing them because they were far better than I could ever imagine I was capable of achieving and completely exceeded my amateur goals. I placed my phone, connected to a card reader down, to grab a tissue and when I picked it up a few moments later- “message reading do you want to undelete data?” - pressed yes-… “data cannot be retrieved” popped up and……😢. Suckiest lesson I’ve ever learned from something I love and put so much time and effort into

One very nice feature of Lightroom Classic is that it has the option of copying your images to a second location on import. It can be a real life-saver!

Thank you, guys, for great video. I recently lost all my videos and photos from photoshoot because of corrupted Hard Drive. I cut all files from Memory Card and paste them to Hard Drive. Something happened during transfer, and I was not able to open any photo or video. Thanks, Jan, for advice about not deleting files from memory card immediately. Now I copy files from card to HD and test to see if I can open and see the files before I delete and format card. And, thank you both for showing your photos. They are amazing.

Turning the SD card upside down in the case is a terrific idea, which I am going to do. Thank you Jan. I went to wetlands in Pitt Town NSW which turned out to be a really large area, but there wasn't a boardwalk around the water which meant you couldn't get any closer to the birds than the far away hide. Although I had a APS-C camera & a 100-400mm lens, it just didn't give me the reach to capture any detail at all of the birds, which was disappointing. Lovely choices for Photos of the Week.