| Low direct sunlight |
| No surprises here, this is the classical starting point for outdoors shooting whether it is
wildlife, landscape or what else. Low sunlight is revealing the texture of bird feather and enhancing colors very well.
Frontlight gives a more flat but realistic look-a-like picture of subject,
while sidelight gives better dimensions and shadows. Very low sun, sometimes even under horizon is also
good for backlighting, to enhance shape of bird with some translucent light through
subject or background vegetation. |
| I prefer a little colder tint of morning light rather than evening.
But mornings are also tricky: the appeal of light disappears very quickly if the sky is clear,
so it is critical to be there in time.. Low Sun tends to confuse my camera white balance automatic on
the warmer side, I usually compensate WB more into blue side on raw file -converter, as opposed to what
I do for cloudy weather pictures. I also prefer to leave some tint of natural light left,
absolutely neutral gray card colors are left for product photography!
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| Exposure is on the safe side, usually -0,6 - +0,3 stop from camera light meter.
Especially sidelight can cause over exposure of whites with very wide range from black to white. |
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| Low diffuse sunlight |
| Slight variation from low sunlight: low sun get filtered through clouds, vegetation or some other
obstacle. This light gives more magic into picture, colors are more muted and sometimes there are weak shadows and
highlights here and there to give even more drama to caption. |
| The example pictures are taken at Wintertime and all of those
pictures benefit from extra light reflected from water nearby. Extra light from below is especially good for flying birds
as it reveals more underwing and belly details. Additional light sources from below are for example water, snow, ice and sand.
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| Sunny daylight |
| Full daylight Sun is often considered as a no-no for productive nature photography.
But the abudance of light is also a potential benefit as long as I'm not photographing a ground walking bird in the middle of
open field with Sun right overhead. Any shadow, interesting backlight, water or other reflecting medium can turn
situation productive. In dark spruce forests this can be the best light to capture pictures of
small birds. Lights and shadows are playing now in forest, while earlier in the morning it was too dark at all
for photography... |
| The bottom right picture was captured in situation where snow was reflecting from below into
bird, another example of how extra light source is 'filling' the shadow created by sunlight. |
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| Cloudy, overcast, rain |
| Challenging and often not only for light conditions. But once again there are new opportunities: show
better delicate middle tone colors and textures you would not see so easily with more direct light.
Birds are active through the day, especially when there is a break on rain, so you have maybe longer time to
shoot than on sunny days. |
| To get the detail of bird show up I try to have neutral to dark background and slightly
overexpose from camera light meter to maximize the picture detail for post processing.
From 0 to 1 stop overexposure is a good starting point. |
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| Tropical evergreen forest |
| This is not my everyday shooting environment but here we go: The problem with tropical forest birding
is that sunlight is blocked by treetops yet you have the most colorful and cute birds hanging around underneath!
Many of those birds have developed a complex color patterns as a efficient camouflage to live in green shadows. As a birder
I want to see in my pictures those colors though. My approach is to set camera to manual mode, usually full aperture and
fill the bird plumage with camera shoe flash. I try to set the flash to minimum and use all available light possible
to get more natural feel into picture. ISO sensitivity is usually set ot 800 or above. |
| Mind you these birds are almost always ultra shy, one or two shots like below are lucky shots. Where there
is more hunting pressure, even to see some particular bird specie can be a big challenge because they hide from people
very fast.
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| Cloudy, misty, fog and snow in open areas |
| This is not my strongest point: flat light and low contrast background are killing most of detail and color.
For a photographers with great compositional skills and strong vision for shapes this light can be in fact an advantage: the picture
talks now more with composition, curves and lines but much less with color or texture. Good composition really
shows up while a mediocre one falls apart with little interest left for a viewer. Yesterday I got this one when I was walking
on shore, maybe I'll learn someday too ;) |
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