Birds are great subjects to photograph but you can end up with the same kind of pictures as everyone else. Here’s how to use slow shutter speeds on your camera to create beautiful blur in photography – it’s really not that hard.
When it comes to photographing wildlife, Andrew Fusek Peters is the go-to guy for advice and expertise. As well as appearing in the UK press more regularly than any other wildlife photographer, he’s often invited on national TV and has published a small library of books – his latest, Garden Safari, is full of amazing pictures of birds and animals taken in people’s gardens.
Usually Andrew’s pictures are a technical tour de force, pin sharp and expertly exposed. But for his latest bird-photography project, partly inspired by the recent wet weather in the UK, he’s been trying a more abstract and experimental approach, deliberately slowing his camera shutter speed down for creative effect.
Andrew took the pictures in his garden during daylight, so he didn’t need to be up at the crack of dawn or shivering away in low winter light. ‘Shooting this way worked perfectly well in pouring rain and heavy cloud,’ he explains.
Time to slow down
‘I don’t normally shoot with a slow camera shutter speed, but with the recent terrible weather and bad light I had no choice,’ Andrew explains from his base in Shropshire. ‘Instead of seeing this as a limitation, I started thinking of this as an opportunity to see what sort of shots I could get.’
‘I shoot with OM System cameras, in this case, the OM-1 Mark II and a 300 mm F4 lens. I shot at the maximum F4 aperture, generally from 1/250th of a second. This is much slower than I’d use for ‘sharp’ bird shots. I also used a slower ISO, anywhere from 200 to 1600 depending on the light.’
Use the obstacle to try something new
Andrew is certainly glad he tried something different and used the dispiriting winter weather to his advantage, creatively speaking.
‘It’s always good to try new methods of photographing wildlife and to experiment rather than just copy what you’ve seen elsewhere. It’s great to think out of the box as you never know what you might come up with and I was so happy with the way these pictures turned out… I was looking for an impression of beauty in the blur.’
All images: credit Andrew Fusek Peters
