Ten Items for Bird Photographers

[Music] um [Music] hello everyone sean carey with migration productions and welcome to exploring the natural world today we're going to look at 10 items that every wildlife photographer should consider having in their arsenal and for today's video i'm actually going to bring back my friends christopher chacon and mike militia you've already met in previous videos to talk about some of the items that they recommend as well so let's talk to christopher and mike hey guys how you doing hey hey welcome back good to see you so we're going to talk about items that we use as wildlife photographers and we all specialize in bird photography but we're going to talk about items that we use that are not a camera or a lens so these are kind of specialty items in a way that each of us use and for i think for all of us i think many of the items we all use but i think it'll be kind of interesting to see what i have in mind christopher what you have in mind and the same thing for you mike so uh christopher or sorry mike uh you first uh what's the first item you want to share with people uh that they might not be thinking of and they might want to add to their arsenal well i've it's kind of a two-piecer here one is a fairly common thing that a lot of people use and that's this black rapid camera strap kind of an over-the-shoulder sling type that really makes everything nice and secure but the way these things come is they basically come with just a regular stud that you would screw say into either the bottom of your camera body if you're working with a wide angle lens or you could screw it into the lens foot if you have a big telephoto lens but then that makes it very cumbersome to change lenses because you can first of all have to make sure you get it nice and tight and you got to unscrew it and screw it and so the the thing that i'm really sort of adding to this is this idea of a one-inch arca-swiss clamp this particular one is made by kirk there are some knock-offs of it now this is also an older version of the kirk so the new ones newer ones look a little different so what i do is rather than screw this constantly have to screw this into one camera body the other camera body uh and most of my lenses have i'm using larger lenses with lens feet so rather than have to screw them into the lens feet i basically just screw the stud into the clamp itself so now i've got a clamp where i can easily just move say if i have a bracket on the camera body i can just mount one camera mount another camera take it off of you know take take the lens off easily i can get it back and forth and it's nice and secure and so forth so that's my thing is this one inch plant i can't take credit for the idea i actually got the idea from charles glatzer originally but i've passed it on to many many people since then and it really makes it especially for people that can use the larger lenses with lens feed it makes the black rapid way more useful and way more easy to use yeah mike you recommended that to me years ago i have it on my black rapid strap i use it all the time with my 100 to 400 uh with other lens combinations and body combinations it works great that's that's a an excellent tip and i'm sure for those people that are using it um they're thrilled to have that and if you're not using it you definitely want to take a look at that christopher what's up for you what's the first item you want to share first thing i want to talk about are um lines uh so there are a couple different types i use a couple different types in my photography uh there's the you know the kind of the well-known sort of pop-up blind there are a bunch of different ones out there i like the tragopan blinds i'm not sure if i'm pronouncing that correctly but they're really made for wildlife photography as opposed to it being just a less expensive hunting blind very roomy and comfortable in addition to that the other thing i use a lot is the is a throw over sort of line so it's just basically a large almost um camouflage tarp i think mine was uh a quick camo that i bought years and years ago i'm not even sure if you can get quick ammo anymore but i know that um lens coat has a bunch of them in different weights and sizes so you can get a winter one or a spring one that's lighter but the thing i use the most actually is i bought some camouflage mesh a couple years ago attached it to some strip magnets so that i can actually use it on my car i use my car as a blind a lot for photography and this just kind of goes over the window and it gives me that extra layer of you know being hidden for smaller sort of skittish or skittishier birds excuse me that i really like a lot and i i think shawn's gonna make sure that we have a photo here that so that you can see actually how this works so it was very inexpensive camouflage mesh material just some strip magnets i picked up from the hardware store some you know double-sided tape and actually eventually if you have access to a sewing machine i actually had my my sister um sew a seam into it even just to make it a little bit more secure but i use that quite a lot yeah christopher when you showed me that design that you made for your vehicle i got to tell you i was blown away i was like oh man that is so ingenious to the point where it's like wow i wonder why someone hasn't actually you know kind of mass produced something like that and maybe we're giving away the secret now and you know you need to get royalty somewhere down the line i'm not sure if it works for anybody else it keeps the birds from getting skittish or flying off and you can get your shots yeah it works better than the way that i've designed with my camo thing on my car i have clamps that i use in this sort of thing it's a little more cumbersome so i really like your idea and i'm sure people will take a look at that b-roll that we're going to run and and you can get a very good idea of how you pull that off so my item is uh this angle c finder this right angle viewfinder and if you look on my lens here if for those people that have never used one basically you just take the little eyepiece off your your body and this goes right on here and then if you've got it lower to the ground and i'll roll some b-roll here you can take a look at me using this you can then you know look in here so you can have it lower to the ground you don't have to you know get yourself flat on the ground to use it i also use it for a lot of macro photography as well this item works really great i really like it i've actually had this longer than possibly any other photographic item that i own this goes back to my film days i've had it that long i think it's around 200 bucks something like that we'll leave the link below for all the items that that we have here that we can recommend so that's my first the angle c finder from canon i'm a canon shooter so uh mike let's go to you what's your second item my second item is something that to me is indispensable when shooting on a beach and that is this skimmer ground pod made by naturescapes and it gives me the ability to get nice and low but also maintain a lot of flexibility in terms of being able to move around being able to approach the birds closer and so forth and so on to get that nice low angle view there are a couple other pieces to this what i often combine it with is wimberley makes this small little riser block it just gives you it screws right onto there gives you a little more a little more height and the reason you want one of the reasons you want that little more height is sometimes you're a little too low but also i tend to use this with the wimberley head and it gives you a little more clearance between the between the bottom knob and the uh and the skimmer itself so that's the other thing that's nice about it so that's it again this is i just like the idea that i can you know i'll i'll approach a bird i'll get sort of well away from its fear circle and then i can get down and i what i'll do often is i'll first i'll just push this along in front of me as i'm crawling and then when i get a little closer then i'll lay down and then i can just put it you know push it ahead and crawl push it ahead and crawl if i need to move a few inches a few feet to the right or left again i can just push it and move it just gives you a lot more mobility than you trying to use a tripod in a situation like that and also allows you to get a lot lower yeah mike i got to tell you it's it's interesting you know that's one item that i always associate with you because you know the three of us right the three of us know a lot of other you know people that are wildlife photographers who specialize in bird photography like we do and i don't know that i see anyone use the skimmer as much as i see you use it it's like i identify that with you you know and and the photos never on the beach without it that's right and a good point cause like when we've been down to plymouth beach in other locations i mean you're always using that thing and you know we'll show a few of the photos here give people an idea of what that angle looks like that you're able to accomplish these really just incredible photos using something like that another another great item to have in your arsenal if you don't already particularly if you're going to do shorebird photography and you want to be low to the ground next up christopher what's your what's your next item the next item for me is something that probably a lot of people have already but if not um i really suggest you get one kind of hand in hand with my previous item where i shoot from my car a lot a bean bag has been absolutely indispensable um just you know i've managed to take shots on rainy kind of overcast days using that bean bag for to put the big lens down over the window and uh you know gotten shots off at 150 at the for one or one sixtieth of a second because that beanbag can hold something nice and steady there are a lot of them on the market now back when i first bought mine for the big lenses one of the best ones was the artie morris's big lens bag blubb there are a lot more of them out there now that'll hold the big bags correctly the big lenses rather correctly um you know you can you can find them from lensco you can find them you know outdoor photography there are a lot of different ones but it is just absolutely indispensable either using it in your car using it if you go into a blind there are a number of blinds here around massachusetts where i always bring the bean bag with me and heck even some of the bean bags now even have a plate where you can put a gimbal head or a head on it so definitely indispensable for wildlife photography yeah bean bag's something i think that we all have we all use it like you said particularly some of the blinds here in massachusetts that we have access to with the massachusetts audubon society and of course you know the three of us did our video on the birds of tanzania when we were in tanzania what were you shooting off of i mean we shot almost exclusively off of bean bags right definitely something you want to have one sort of bonus tip i'll give relative to bean bags is one of the one of the inconveniences is to travel with them full because they're they can if you fill one of these larger ones with rice it's over 20 pounds and then even if you could travel with it which is kind of impractical then you get there you have to go to find a store buy yourself 20 or 25 pounds worth of rice and then figure out what to do with it afterwards so what i sometimes do is i fill them well what i always do now is i fill mine with buckwheat hulls they're available at most local nurseries they're used as mulch it'll it'll instead of a 20 pound plus bean bag you'll end up with like four pounds so it becomes much more practical to possibly even travel with it full yeah for a long time i did mine with black oil sunflower seed thinking okay if i need to like loosen it or something like that it's it's burnt food i can just toss some but yeah it's it's so incredibly heavy the buckwheat shells yeah yeah you definitely don't want to be traveling with a full bean bag if you're using like you say mike you're using rice or sunflower seeds so that's a great tip as well i i will say however just so everyone knows when you know again when we were in tanzania we didn't have to travel with any beanbags they were supplied to us there in country so just a note on that okay so to my next item uh and that is my travel stool this is a from rei this is a very lightweight stool and if anyone has seen me out in the field whether it's here in massachusetts or new england or anywhere in north america or traveling internationally i always have this with me i just find it invaluable particularly when i want to be sitting low to the ground drop my tripod down kind of get a little bit lower to the ground and the nice thing about this particular it's very lightweight that's why i like this particular one for mario there's a lot of tripod type stools out there that you can find from many different manufacturers but again this is the one that i have found that i really like and again i've traveled everywhere with it and i i can't imagine going going somewhere and not having it so again if you're looking for a tripod stool this is one that you want to take a look at so that's my next item mike what's your third and final item to share well continuing with the theme of beach photography uh one of the big problems there is of course the sand can be insidious and it just gets it gets on your lenses it gets on your tripod it gets between the threads and you know when it's of course when it's wet all you can really do is leave it until it dries on you don't really want to be trying to clean it off in that regard but then when you're all finished and the sand has had a chance to dry it's still very hard to get off and you don't want to leave it around because then it could possibly get in your camera so you want to make sure you get everything off and so once it's all dry like that the thing that i find indispensable more than any cloth or anything like that is a simple paintbrush just a standard soft one-inch paintbrush and it just does an amazing job of getting the sand off your stuff so it's very very low-tech solution to a very bad problem that's very practical advice mike i love it yeah the paintbrush that's a that's a good thing to have absolutely christopher what else do you have to share with us anything uh last thing that i had was the um so again keeping with the theme of trying to keep a low profile not interfering with the birds in their daily routines one of the other things that you can use is a remote shutter release so you there are cabled ones which are great if you're kind of watching something maybe from a blind or you really want to see something where it's flying in and hit the shutter without having your eye glued to the um back of your camera the other thing that i have here is also a wireless one so you kind of plug this part into the camera um and then you have a little you know ir wireless remote control and there are a couple different styles this one's an older one from velo that i picked up where you can set the camera up you know get you focused on your spot maybe on your perch or whenever you're hoping your bird's going to land and then you can pull back and give that bird some space and then just when he comes in or you see him coming in you can just trip the shutter and you have different options on most of these where you can have a delay if you need to so if you you know you're concerned about um you know movement you know with the shutter and stuff like that you can do a delay but this works out really nicely i don't use it a lot but it when you want it man it is a great thing to have that's the thing about some of these items right i mean there's certain things you know we don't use them all the time but on those few occasions when you need it boy you really need it right so all right so my third item uh this is number nine on our list we're going to have the tenth one coming up but number nine for me is actually something relatively new for me from lens coat and i'm going to take it off my tripod here so you can see what this looks like and this is relatively new you know most people have the leg wraps for their tripod which can work quite well and i used to have those but i saw this on lens coats website or i saw it on a youtube video i forget exactly where i kind of ran into it recently and i thought you know this looks like something that i would want to use and it's so basic in its design but it's it's just incredible the way it just does exactly what you want it to do and you can just you know again you'll just see me just take it set it up on your legs of your tripod and that's it it's in place you know once you go to grab your tripod and your hoisting up that's it you're good to go and it works incredibly well i've had it now for a few months and i would certainly recommend this one i'll leave the link below in the description if you want to check that out something i would definitely recommend so that's the three items from each of us we're going to give one tip on one item that all three of us own and use and that's a beach rolly cart and i gotta say i gotta give credit where credit's there this comes from mike militia mike had recommended it to me and i think christopher i don't even know how long ago now more than a couple years ago and i picked one up right away because i do spend a lot of time photographing on on beaches here in massachusetts and in florida and other locations and it's really been invaluable and christopher i know you picked up one and boy i tell you it really works wonders i've taken mine down to florida many occasions and again we've used it up here in massachusetts and take a look at this photo here of a bunch of us on plymouth beach years ago and christopher i think you actually took the shot even though one of our friends right even though one of our friends is usually standing in front of my cart and i took the photo right so yeah it works great it's it's really a fantastic uh tool to have if you're going to be traveling if you've got a bad back and you want to walk around with big lenses so you got to go some distances man this is you want to have one of these you know i can't tell you how much pain this has saved my back over the years yeah i think about again just using on plymouth beach or up on the north shore or even down at daniel webster one of the audubon sanctuaries here you know load my gear up and take it out and it just it works great in sand you know even in snow i've had it in areas where you've had snow so the thing just works fabulously so mike that was a great suggestion years ago appreciate it thank you the other thing that i the other thing i like about it is that you don't have to you're much more likely to carry gear that you like for example i use that ground pot most of the time but sometimes you come across a situation where you need a tripod but you know you might not decide to take both or you might not decide to take an extra lens but this way i can just load everything on there and have everything i could possibly use and not have to you know lug it all the whole way down the beach and back so that's why yeah that's a great point that's kind of how i think about it as well yeah definitely so there you have it folks there's 10 items from the three of us to you to consider for your photographic arsenal for wildlife and bird photography i hope you enjoyed this video if you did please hit the like button and subscribe so you don't miss any future videos here on exploring the natural world and as always please remember help protect wildlife and help protect wild places cheers thanks again guys thank you thank you sean it's great to be back [Music] you

Channel: Migration Productions Exploring the Natural World

Views: 19,780

Rating: 4.8643069 out of 5

Keywords: Bird Photography, wildlife photography, Mike Milicia, Christopher Ciccone, skimmer pod, skimmerpod, photo blinds, Eckla Beach Rolly cart, Canon Angle Finder C, BlackRapid Camera Strap, Skimmer Ground Pod

Id: o7LT7P-yAE8

Length: 19min 11sec (1151 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 13 2021