Happy Birds Make Happy Photographers!

A photo friendly habitat makes the job much easier - and it doesn't have to be fancy or expensive. The basic setup below contains all the elements needed for the birds (food, water and cover) and I added a few low cost perching options for my (and the bird's benefit). Keeping an eye open after some spring thunder storms can usually turn up broken branches and chopped up trees. I used one chopped stump that I found and several branches to make up different perching options for my feathered friends.

In order to be "portable" with my displays and able to change my perches out, I use a potting bucket filled with stones as my base. It keeps everything nice and orderly, mobile and fairly easy to make changes.

Here are a few more photo friendly environment tips to keep in mind:

Pay attention to your backgrounds. The farther away you can keep them and minimize drastic color changes, the better you'll be. It will help deliver a nice creamy background.
Shoot tight. As you can see in my setup - distractions abound. Shooting tightly allows you to place bird feeders near by (to interest your subjects and encourage them to hang out on your perch) without having these "hand of man" items ruin your shot.
Don't forget the sun location - both now and next month. As the sun moves through the season, it's position will shift slightly - making a flexible shooting environment a must.

In part three, we'll get to the meat of it - making some great bird shots! Stay tuned.

If you missed part one, you can find it here.

Stay focused,

Mark