I went to the wildlife photography exhibition in Birmingham and I was wowed by the pictures. I was even asking questions there like “How do you take photos like that?” and “where do you go to see these animals?” I also thought there was no way I will ever be that good at photography.
Flamingos are not spotted everywhere. I saw one in Italy but then I saw two and then three and then hundreds and hundreds more of them although they don’t stay in the same space. They tend to stay in flocks. I also saw herons in Po valley.
Speaking of herons I saw one in a pond near my house. I went down to the pond earlier today and there was a heron there plus there was a family of kingfishers there too. Kingfishers are hard to find and even harder to take a picture of one.
Kingfishers are hard to spot and all that but they are quite a vibrant bird. Kingfishers hunt fifteen fishes per day but if it has babies it has a lot more fish to catch as babies eat the same amount as the adult.
Then I notice it was a family of kingfishers. There was also a really angry squirrel that was quite literally barking and it was distracting me from taking pictures of the birds so when it stopped I could finally focus on taking pictures. Then one of the kingfishers posed on a branch and I finally got a shot of one. And the heron was just stalking up and down gulping fish. We didn’t see the kingfisher at first but when we did I couldn’t un-spot it. As it stands the coolest bird might just be over the road.
Dad says:
Victor was really inspired by the Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition last year and has been working hard on taking good photos everywhere we go. Birds are not a good place to start with photography because they are small and fast and take a lot of patience.
I’ve been trying to find the right camera for him. He found the laggy viewfinder of an Lumix bridge camera frustrating, couldn’t handle the weight of a Fujifilm X-H2, got fed up with blurry shots from a Canon compact.
These were taken with a Nikon D3300 with 70-300 lens. It’s a good combo for light weight, big range, fast focus, long battery life, easy handling. You need all of those attributes to have a good time photographing kingfishers!