One aspect of media that I am particularly interested in exploring is wildlife documentary. I have always had a passion for animals, and combined with my love for media, I think that it would be something that I’d really enjoy.
However, I know that it isn’t easy.
In lieu of travelling to the most remote parts of the world (Seven Worlds, One Planet was filmed in over 41 countries in 1794 days), I decided to split my lesson into two parts – one at the beach, and one in my backyard aviary. In both of those locations, the focus was birds. I think that they’re always a good subject to practice wildlife photography/videography with because they’re extremely skittish and unpredictable. There is also a large number of them in both of those locations, so I wouldn’t have to wait for too long for a single opportunity.
I also decided to have a different focus in each of the shoots. At the beach, I wanted to work on my photography skills and motion – in particular, the appropriate settings to have the camera on. In my aviary, I wanted to focus on capturing natural behaviours and framing them. A fair bit of thought did go into these decisions, including animal-related ones and media-related ones;
At the beach, I decided to experiment with the three basic elements of photography, playing with one at a time to explore it’s effects and what is best for wildlife photography. I have read a few articles on this,
my favourite coming from Ralph Lee Hopkins, a wildlife photographer for the National Geographic.
I set my ISO first, as I felt that I didn’t need to experiment with it. I knew that – given that I was in such a bright environment – that I didn’t need to worry about exposure. Even on a low ISO, I would be free to explore different shutter speeds and apertures, without the image becoming too dark (plus, I could always change it later).
First, I wanted to look at shutter speed. Ralph Lee Hopkins recommends a shutter speed between 1/1000s and 1/2000s for wildlife photography. The shutter speed correlates to how long the shutter is open during a photo. The faster the shutter speed, the less time the shutter is open, and the crisper the photo. In action photography, a faster shutter speed will minimise blur. However, a faster shutter speed will also let less light in, so will affect the overall exposure of a photo. The counter to this (aside from ISO) is aperture, so for the sake of this exercise, I decided to put aperture on auto to remove it as a variable.
At SS 1/1000, the photo wasn’t bad at all. If you were to look at it in a magazine, it would be fine. However, on any form of digital media – there is clear blur in the bird’s wings.
It’s not severe by any means, but it’s there. It would be fine if there was no plan to zoom in on the bird, but at that shutter speed, it is slightly more restrictive.
I then tried shutter speed 1/2000. 
At shutter speed 1/2000, there was slightly less motion blur. It was still present, 
though subtle. But I realised that I didn’t hate it as much as I thought I would. Unlike in the previous photo, the blur looks almost appropriate. The bird is in motion – rapid motion – and the blur, in this situation – enhances the shot. I’d gone into the exercise wanting to get as much detail as possible – wanting to see every single feather – but I can now see that there’s merit in using this shutter speed.
At this point, I was wanting to see if it was possible to get almost every detail of the bird’s wings. I took these two photos at SS 1/3000 and 1/3500. (I also noticed how dark the photos were getting – I was at f/5.6, but the faster shutter speed really was starting to affect the exposure).
Then the close ups of the birds…
I was frankly amazed at how crisply the motion could be captured, keeping in mind that my camera can go as fast as 1/8000s. I was starting to run out of light at this point – I had about half an hour of strong light left – and decided to move onto the next part of my exercise.
When I’d read the article by Ralph Lee Hopkins, I’d been surprised that he used aperture priority over shutter priority. I’d always thought that it would make sense to do the opposite so you’d be prioritizing motion – but in the field, I understood why he’d done it.
I’d made the snap decision to set my shutter speed to 1/2500. I did this to capture the motion, but in hindsight, I would have gone for a slower speed. By prioritizing the motion, I’d restricted the apertures that I could explore. Anything low became too dark – but that being said, low apertures are terrible for wildlife photography as the depth of field becomes too shallow, and it is difficult to maintain focus. Especially with the birds being as unpredictable as they were, I found that it was a constant struggle to focus on the animal.
Using mid-range apertures still allowed for some blur in the background – which, especially in a photo where the subject only takes up a small section of the frame, is useful as it guides the viewer’s eye to the desired place.
The first photo was taken with f/5.6, second with f/7.1 and the final f/8.
There definitely wasn’t as much difference as I was expecting – there’s only a subtle difference between the changing apertures.
This was the point that the sun decided to set, and part one of experiment ended.
After returning home, I took this photo of my dog as a better example of low aperture – I still do like the affect, but it seems as though it works mainly for domestic, calm and up-close animals. (or other non-moving subjects) ((Both taken with f/3.2)
I then went onto part two of my exercise, and that was videoing the budgies in my aviary. Here, I wanted to focus on capturing natural behaviours, as well as framing. The reason I wanted to concentrate on framing is because it can be difficult. They move so quickly that, more often than not, they have flown off as soon as you get the shot lined up. This particular clip is a prime example…
I spent a while in the aviary over two days. It is also worth mentioning that you cannot stand in my aviary, and that it’s also too tight for a tripod. The tripod also became too restrictive when it came to moving around to change angle – by the time I had, the birds were gone.
I was also trying to frame the birds up before pressing record, which I soon realised was a bad idea. Other than the budgies flying away before I had the opportunity to press record (or having the bird leave in the first three seconds), the act of actually pressing the button made the camera dip. This in turn made the footage unusable.
So taking long clips became the most viable option. They’d have to be cut down later, but at least there would be footage there.
Finally, I discovered that using auto focus – which I had done so I didn’t have to worry about focusing and could concentrate on framing – was actually less accurate than focusing myself. At times, the camera struggled to identify the budgie as the subject, and would search for the bird. That used valuable seconds, which led to the bird flying away.
After two days of shooting, I finished with a little over thirty minutes of footage. I then took this to my laptop, interested in seeing how much of it was actually usable. This is what I cut the half-hour down too…
If anything, I was surprised that I’d even managed to get close to ten minutes. I’d thought that far less than a third of the footage would be viable. I’m not saying that the footage is super interesting or anything, but it’s there.
Then, I tried to cut it down to the clips that I actually liked…
I was very happy with the outcome, and felt that it taught me a lot about exposure, aperture, and shutter speed. In the aviary, I finessed some of my framing skills, and learnt how to better capture animals in any environment.
