Birds, especially birds in flight, can be some of the most difficult subjects in wildlife photography. Once you’re able to master birds in flight, you’ll have the skills necessary to photograph any other wildlife you may come across.

1. Get low

This is probably the best tip I can give for any kind of wildlife photography. I always suggest having your camera at your subject’s eye level. For birds, that could be just inches off the ground.

Getting low is all about perspective. If you’re standing tall and pointing down at your subject, your background is going to be the ground under your subject. If you’re at a low angle and shooting perpendicular to the ground, your background will be much farther away and become blurred out. Blurring the background is crucial to making your subject stand out and adding minimalism to your photographs.

Pro tip: If your subject is flying above you, this doesn’t really apply…

2. Use a fast shutter speed

A shutter speed of 1/800th is fast enough to freeze most bird movement. If they’re flying towards you or have fast wings, you may prefer 1/1600th or 1/3200th. Keep in mind that the head (eye) of the bird won’t be moving nearly as fast as the wings.

If you pan along to follow your subject, the relative movement in your viewfinder isn’t that much. The fast shutter speed just helps to freeze the wings. It will be easier to freeze movement in soaring birds than it is for birds flapping their wings.

Practicing with various shutter speeds on the subjects you photograph most will help you determine what speed is needed to freeze motion of that subject. You want to use the fastest speed required, but not any faster. If your speed is too fast, you’re going to have to use a higher ISO unnecessarily to compensate. Higher ISO means more noise and grain, and less sharpness.

Shutter speed of 1/800th, f/8.0 and ISO 400

For really fast wings, like a hummingbird, a flash can help you freeze the wings more effectively. This is because the duration of the flash can be much faster than possible just through shutter speed. I don’t photograph using a flash so it’s not something I teach, but you can easily find more on this subject online if you’re interested.

3. Get closer

The more pixels you can get on your subject, the more detail and sharpness you’ll see. Getting closer means less cropping, so you’re not having to compromise quality to fill the frame. The more you crop, the more lens defects will become apparent.

The closer you are to your subject, the less likely you are to encounter heat waves shooting in the sun. Sometimes it’s unavoidable, but make sure not to shoot over hot asphalt, rocks, sand, car hood, etc.

Getting closer requires practicing your fieldcraft, approaching as quietly and slowly as possible. If the animal reacts, you must stop or risk it flying away. If birds are accustomed to people, you don’t necessarily need camouflage clothing, but drab colors will certainly make it easier for you. A vehicle can be used as a very effective “blind” in many cases.

4. Practice telephoto lens techniques

There is no substitute for lots of practice when it comes to the ability to find your subject quickly when picking up your camera. Your field of vision is extremely small with a telephoto lens, so you have to work on your hand-eye coordination until you’re able to pick your lens up and have it pointed at the subject right away. Practice first on still subjects, then slow subjects, then birds that appear quickly in the sky.

Try using your camera setup with and without a tripod. A gimbal head on a tripod will make it easier to move quickly to different angles, but no tripod makes it even simpler as long as you can hold your lens steady. If you are using a tripod, you will have trouble with flying subjects if your tripod isn’t tall enough to have your camera pointed up and you underneath it.

Almost all of my photographs are shot handheld using a 13 pound lens, even for birds in flight. The tripod takes time to get out and set up, and that may cause you to miss shots when you come on to a scene. If you know for sure your subject isn’t going anywhere (landscapes, bison, carcass) then you’ll have time to set up a tripod. A monopod is a good compromise between the two if you aren’t able to hold your lens long enough.

5. Use multiple focus points

A single focus point may be best for slower subjects, but the more erratically your subject moves the more focus points you’ll need to keep the subject under them. Five or nine focus points in a group may work for most situations, but if your subject is filling the frame and you expect some quick movements then you can use a larger zone or all focus points.

With more focus points, your camera is able to keep at least one of them on your subject so that focus doesn’t fall off to the background or another object. If you have all focus points available, you can keep focus on your subject even if it starts going towards the edge of the frame. The faster your subject is, the less accurate you can be and the more you have to rely on your camera’s autofocus tracking abilities. Don’t expect a cheap camera (<$500) to be able to keep up with quick birds. The better your camera is, the higher percentage of in focus keeper shots you’ll come away with.

If you’d like to improve your bird photography with hands on instruction, join me for a three day workshop next March in Apalachicola, Florida! We will work on the skills explained here, plus others and some post processing with Adobe Lightroom. You’ll have the opportunity to photograph osprey, eagle, pelican, cormorant, owls, and various shorebirds in a beautiful coastal location.

Click here to learn more.