“If you build it, they will come”

by Darren

The title of this post is a common misquote from the film ‘Field of Dreams’ with Kevin Costner (the actual line is “…he will come”).

It’s a great mantra for wildlife photography. After all,taking a picture is just decisions about focus, exposure and composition. Once you’ve learned how to do that you can start learning how to take pictures, and in many cases it’s just a matter of solving a problem, using whatever tools you need. This is something I intend to demonstrate when we start publishing videos on the site.

You may have noticed a bamboo cane like this in a few of my images. Strapping a branch to a bird feeding station is a great way to create a perch that birds will use, which will then allow you to get nice portraits of garden birds with a wide aperture and a blurred background. If you use fallen branches then of course it will look more natural but you do have to change it quite regularly as the wood dies off.