hi i'm ellie rothney and welcome to the masterclass for wildlife photography at home [Music] i started photography when i was about eight years old and we all have an inspiration in our lives whether it's a friend or someone in the family and for me like many of you i know it was my father now dad was a really really keen amateur photographer he he in a way preferred landscapes uh to wildlife um but it was him putting um a camera in my hands at the age of eight and photographing hedgehogs on the lawn in the garden that just really really got me into photography it was just that initial inspiration and i've actually got one of his cameras here to show you so this is the canon av-1 and this was uh what we used uh it must have been the late 1970s with this camera this is what we use to photograph those hedgehogs um now i did the usual thing i went through school i went to university my father was a geography lecturer so we were always always outdoors in in nature and walking the hills and the mountains and always taking photographs and for me they were just snapshots at the time but this is the camera that that i would borrow from from dad um and it was his pride and joy this camera um you know he was so protective of it so just to be able to hold the camera and take some photographs was was a really big thing for me at the time then when i finished uh university i did geography by the way as well inspired by my dad i finished university and i went to kenya it was a lifelong dream and we're talking about the early 1990s here now and i really really needed a camera so dad lent me his av-1 um he lent me a 300 mil lens which was not much bigger than the one that you can see on here and off i went with this camera to kenya for the first time shooting on film as it was in those days wondering whether i got exposures and shutter speeds right or wrong i didn't really know you know i was making it up as i went along basically but just very very good memories of that first trip and just getting one shot of a mother elephant being followed by a baby elephant um with this camera was was something special for me to to just get that shot i then went into marketing so for many years i followed a marketing career working for a number of um big companies but i was always always taking pictures always and i was traveling as well i i've always always loved to travel so wherever i went the camera was with me and even then it was still this it was the film camera and it was probably about 14 years ago now that i became very serious about photography and the turning point was when i bought my 500 mil lens and i think then it was the 300d so the world had just turned digital and that was the turning point where i started to get very serious about what i was doing and focusing a lot more on wildlife pictures rather than just you know architecture scenery travel type shots within the last sort of eight or nine years i've been guiding and i turned into a full-time professional so the guiding has has been fantastic in terms of uh still giving me the ability to travel and also meeting lots of people instructing people about how to take better pictures and actually just being outdoors with nature doing what i love [Music] so in today's masterclass we're going to focus on woodland birds and i'm going to take you to a homemade feeding station that i've made just for you and we're going to have a look at how to get the best pictures of birds i'm going to go through some techniques i'm going to be going through shutter speeds iso aperture and how i position the feeding station and the pop-up hide today we're going to be focusing on bird photography and so the kit in my bag for today is specifically for for birds so the main camera i'm going to be using today for the shoot is the canon 1dx3 it's got a superb autofocus system um and its iso capabilities um certainly at high iso are spectacular so when we've got a situation where we've got quite a dull day which we might do later today it just means that i can really dial in a very very high iso and still get uh high shutter speeds and sharp shots of those little woodland birds so that's the camera body the main camera body that i'm going to be using today paired with that is this beautiful lens this is the canon 500 mil now this is the lens that i use every day pretty much all day for small birds large birds for mammals i absolutely adore the 500ml and when you pair it onto a pro camera like the the 1dx series it's it's a partnership made in heaven it's a very very beautiful lens so on the whole today i'm going to be using this it's very quick i can take this down to f4 which means i can let a lot more light in a into the camera and yeah it's super so that's the main lens the other lens that i will have in my bag just as a backup for bird photography is the canon 300 mil this is the f 2.8 again so i can really open up those apertures which is fantastic for wildlife photography very very fast lens again and yeah a little bit light and a little bit smaller than the 500 and i always always carry a second camera body with me just as a backup and my camera body is the canon 5d mark iv on the whole i use this camera mainly for wildlife portraits and for macro photography but even on a shoot like today with with woodland birds it's just great to have a backup in your bag just in case and last but not least in terms of the camera kit is the canon 1.4 extender and again so this is the mark iii this will go on a 300 mil or a 500 mil and it's just a fantastic piece of kit if you just want to get that little bit of extra reach on a very small bird okay um and then um standard really so uh we've just got lens covers um these are pretty good i use these all the time um they're sort of a plastic inside there a cotton outside they go over your telephoto lens and over your camera protect against wind rain snow sand if you're on the beach they're just just fantastic just have as a an extra bit of kit just to give everything protection and then also just as some smaller things oh yes i always carry spare batteries lots of memory cards and i always take one of these around so this is from a well-known bike shop and this is just for tightening up your tripod head or any nuts on your tripod um and great for traveling you can see the whole thing just folds down and and fits into your either your camera bag or your suitcase if you're going overseas so just a great little bit of kit that's always in there um bizarrely i always carry carabiners with me um certainly if there are some uh you're working in places like africa or even gibraltar and you've got some naughty little macaques around they're really really good for just uh anchoring up your your camera bag up the zips but i always carry this because you just don't know when you need this sort of thing and that's it that's everything really that we're going to have on the on the shoot with us today [Music] [Music] this is a really basic uh feeding station that i set up literally one week ago so it just shows what you can do in a very short space of time with with woodland birds that are coming into your garden and there are just a few important factors that i just wanted to talk through with you about why i positioned it here the first thing is that just to the left of me we've got some woodland and this is the the main habitat for the birds that we're going to be photographing and the station isn't that far from from the trees themselves now the reason for this is that these birds will uh feel safe in in those trees in that woodland they'll come out to this feeding station to feed and then they'll literally go straight back into the trees again and that's a really important factor that if i'd put this hide in the middle of a big field somewhere i wouldn't have had such a success rate with attracting the birds to the feeder that's the first point to consider is just where you position just give the the birds um a safety net that they can fly straight into and and they'll feel much happier this way the second thing i did um is then looked at the position of where i i'm standing now in terms of where the light is throughout the day so i was following the light in this certain spot um you know right at dawn midday through to the evening and watching during the winter months where the the sun is tracking and for example if i just situated this just a little bit further up up that way um again near the trees it would have been in complete shade whereas you can see now we've got a winter sun and it's creating some really beautiful light the third thing to consider is uh your backgrounds and what i've done again is i've looked at the backgrounds here and i've situated this against some lovely catkins and when you're taking those still shots it's picking up the most beautiful color at the moment with the catkins so three key key things to consider to start situate it near a hedge or some trees watch where the light is tracking during the day and think clearly about your background so it creates a really nice backdrop to the images that you're going to be taking um right very very simple so as i suggested these are some old really old logs covered in moss that i found in in the woods really rotting i've just put them on my dad's old work mate just for stability the beauty with using the workmate as well was i was able to just put this uh tree uh post in here and uh i've drilled some holes in the back of here that i've pushed suets and peanuts into this this is really good food for bird species like the great spotted woodpecker the j the long tail tits they love coming onto this perch here and moving up and down and taking that through it and those nuts what i've also then done is i've actually screwed this um perch onto the back here and you know there's nothing wrong with just using a piece of wood that you have but what i wanted to do was just take something that's very seasonal and this is why i just found this small branch with with these beautiful pink catkins on here because again you know um bird species like the long tail tit the blue tit um and the coal tip the great it are all using this at the moment as a perch so they're flying in from the the trees just here landing on the perch they're then taking a look down at the log which i'm placing the food along the log and then they're literally taking the food and going straight back to the safety of the trees the last factor about feeding is i've just put some very makeshift bird feeders up here as well so in this bird feeder we've got an assortment of seeds peanuts suet pellets in here and in this one it's it's pure peanuts and it's just to attract a variety of different species to your feeding station um simple that's it so um this is a perch that i was using just literally over the weekend again catkins and i'd screwed this on the back here and i was taking some beautiful shots in the snow which you'll be able to see and then i found this one with the you know a different color so this is the one that we'll work with today for the for the master class and what we then do is we're just going to uh put down some food onto our log now um just to attract the birds down here so i've got a mixture again of the seed the suet and the peanuts so i'm just going to put them in little areas like this and when we're photographing this bird food is actually hidden by the moss in front of it so you shouldn't be able to see these peanuts in the suet and i put a little bit just in here like this and some along here like that there we go i'm just going to check yeah i'm just going to pop a peanut in one of the holes here we've still got some suet in here and i saw the great of woodpecker going up and down this this branch earlier this morning so there we go so the great thing about a feeding station like this is it's so simple to do and it's so basic you know it's just using materials that you've got around uh in your garden or you know when you go and have a have a short walk so this can be uh set up you know just on your garden lawn um using the same principles of just use a hedge for safety look where your sun's shining and just look at your backgrounds but so so simple to do uh in your garden and literally um you can't see this on camera but my house is just there anyway so i've literally just moved the station into the field rather than just having it in in my back garden let's go and do some photography i'm going to show you uh the pop-up hide another important thing to perhaps think about just to keep yourself hidden before we go what i do is i just take away the bird feeders because now the birds are used to coming here feeding on the feeders taking the food from the log and now i just want to encourage them uh to go onto the log and not onto the feeders so i just take these away for an hour or two that's it and then i put them back [Music] so what i've also done is i've just used a pop-up hide and this is fantastic if you just need to conceal yourself from from the birds now some of the species that you get in your garden are probably quite used to seeing you and you'd be fine just concealing yourself behind a tree or next to a hedge or something like this but if you want to sit there for quite a long time and certainly if you want to photograph a species like uh jay and great spotted woodpecker um then uh one of these pop-up hides is is just ideal so easy to uh sort of staked down you know put up it takes two minutes and i've i've literally situated this about 20 meters or so from the perch now the way i did this was i just took some test shots of the the perch with a 500 mil lens and then also with the 500 mil with the 1.4 converter because i was just testing the backgrounds and i was also testing my position in respect to to the perch and just making sure i had all those distances um right and that i was happy with them and then i literally put the hide up that was it so i've just put the 1dx3 onto live view so that i can show you the composition of the shot and here you can see the perch you can't see the food behind the mass and you can see the lovely bokeh on that background of the trees and really now it's a case of we just sit here and we wait we're patient [Applause] [Music] so in terms of settings um i've set this camera to an iso of 2500. i work on the hole in aperture priority or av which you might see on your camera and the reason i work with aperture priority is a two-fold the first is that generally my style of shooting is with a very very wide aperture and what this does is it a lets more light into the camera to hit your sensor which means that you can work generally with slightly lower isos and still retain a very fast shutter speed and the second thing that working with a wide aperture does is it really blows out that background and gives that fantastic backer and what happens when we have a bird or indeed a mammal um that subject will will really uh pop in in that setting so at the moment my settings are an iso of 2500 an aperture of f 5.6 and i tend to dial in a much faster shutter speed and i'm looking at a minimum of 1 1600th of a second um even taking that up to one two thousandth or one two and a half thousand so that's that's very very fast and the reason i do this is with the very small birds you know like your blue tits and your nut hatches and so on um they they're very they're just very fast moving even when they're on this patch they're generally moving around very quickly um and clearly um you know i'm wanting to capture a sharp shot of that bird so that that small bird so i'm working on very fast shutter speeds with that and as i say i'm keeping the aperture as wide open as i can to let in all that lovely light and then i'm managing my shutter speed by either increasing or decreasing the iso when i'm taking shots of much larger birds you can afford slower shutter speeds and certainly when those larger birds are flying um you know they're they're much less erratic you can track them far more easily and you know so you can for example pan that shot where you you're following the lens with the bird um and you can get away with with them slower shutter speeds for that i just want to show you the the second part that um i've set up for you and this is the the perch with the the pink catkins on it just to show you how beautiful this looks um against the the background of those trees um and it's basically just a case of sitting here and waiting for the birds to show up [Music] [Music] so if it's not possible in your garden to put up a pop-up hide you can still just get down low just keep yourself eye level with those perches that you've built and at that distance and just stay in position keep calm don't move don't make a noise and you might find that the bird still will come to your feeder [Music] so at the moment we've got a group of long tail tits and they're basically casing the joint they're flying all the way around the trees um and over the perch at the moment and i expect they're going to come in the settings that i'm using for for these birds they're very very quick so i'm on a shutter speed of one uh 2 500 f 5.6 and an iso of 3200 and i'm just waiting they'll come down and they'll come for the suet and they'll come for the peanuts um and uh yeah they're a beautiful bird oh right hang on there [Applause] [Music] so this is a really good spot to photograph the j and out of all the the woodland birds that we get in our gardens the j is the one that i've been so pleased to photograph uh since i set this perch up they're very very jumpy um so just the slightest movement and generally they they'll fly so i've been getting some super shots of of jays on this perch even three at the same time and if there's one bird that i'm really really pleased about being able to capture it's it's the j [Music] [Applause] another thing to mention is if you can learn the calls of the birds it really really helps so for example whether you're in your pop-up hide in the garden or in a field or you're walking through the woods and you can hear those birds calling you know what you've got and you can just stop and listen to that and you know for example there's a j in the vicinity or there's a great uh spotted woodpecker nearby and you can just stop and wait and often you know that bird you'll have a fleeting glance of that bird and you know you might get a lovely flight shot of a woodpecker flying through the trees so um that's another little tip really is is just learn your bird calls and keep watching those birds learn about their behaviors and you should really enjoy the experience of photographing woodland birds [Music] so it's always worth going for a walk with your camera too and um on the 1dx3 i've just popped the 300 mil on here the canon 300 um it's much lighter to actually carry than the 500 and just gives you a little bit more agility so it's always just worth walking the borders of the trees or if you've got any woodland or even a park and just seeing what you can take um the backgrounds might be a little bit messier unless you're very very lucky but you know you're really able to capture those species in in their habitat watch your iso uh so you really want to keep your uh shutter speeds fast as we talked about um you know between the 1 to the one uh two and a half thousandth um so just manage that with um your iso and because you've got a canopy uh in the woods you might just need to push that eye so it's just something to to keep her a watch of um and uh yeah have fun and see what birds you can find as you go on your woodland walk so to summarize our master class about photographing close to home with the woodland birds look at building your perch and where to site this so look at where the light is falling look at your backgrounds to get those lovely clean backgrounds and put down a variety of food on your perch to attract a wide range of birds to to your feeding station think about peanuts mixed seed niger seed and suet and you should really be able to attract whatever birds that you have in in your neighborhood and yeah just uh have fun with this look at concealing yourself so if you can put up something like a pop-up hide or even some web netting or something like this just to hide yourself and be patient be persistent do protect nature and wildlife so never harm anything in this process and just have fun with the whole journey you know keep photographing those birds every day in different lights and different weather conditions um change your perches around so that you're always getting a different type of shot and you might just become a lot more experimental with your perches as well as as you go through this learning process so do have fun