Wildlife Photography Tips: How to Capture the BREATH of Birds & Animals

Welcome everybody to another video and today I'm going to show you how to capture the breath of birds and animals, something you can do with common wildlife subjects and most cameras. I'm also going to show you why it might not be as complicated as you first think. Now to capture these types of images it's really all about the conditions and there's three ingredients that you need. The first one is a suitable temperature, secondly you need the right kind of lighting and thirdly you need a good background. Now it goes without saying that the temperature does need to be low enough for that breath to show up but it doesn't need to be super cold. In fact I've taken successful images around zero degrees celsius and even up to plus five so early in the morning is going to be your best bet hovering around zero or below is going to be ideal. Now it might be possible to take these kinds of images close to sunset but I think early morning is going to be best. When it comes to lighting I think backlighting is always going to be best, I think it can work with side lighting but generally where you're shooting towards the sun that's going to allow that light to shine through and highlight that breath. You can test this out for yourself, simply look at your own breath on a cold morning, look around other people walking about, maybe dogs for example, and you'll see that breath showing up. Shooting in this situation I would definitely recommend a lens hood and wherever possible you want to look for a clear dark background. A clear background with no distractions is going to help you to see that breath better and the darker the background the more contrast it's going to give, you've got the contrast between that light breath and the dark background that's going to help the breath to stand out more clearly. Now I do think this can work with slightly lighter backdrops but generally speaking I think darker is better. One thing you don't want to do is shoot against the sky or light water. So examples of dark backgrounds could include trees, maybe a woodland edge, hillsides and steep-sided banks. And one more thing that can help with capturing the breath is the wind. Now I think generally to have low wind is better for these types of pictures, doesn't mean you can't do it with stronger winds, I'll mention that later, but where the wind speed is low it just helps that breath to linger for longer. I think it's easier to get those pictures. So low wind is ideal but I don't think this is important as the other three elements. Now when it comes to camera settings these might not be as important as you think. With the aperture I generally just keep this fairly wide to help separate that subject and the breath from the background. Shutter speed, I just use a reasonably fast shutter speed that you probably do often for your own wildlife photography. I don't think it needs to be super high. ISO, just try not to push it too high if possible, that's going to depend to a large extent on your camera. Now the exposure, I think the exposure will be fairly accurate on a lot of modern cameras if that exposure meter is in the middle. If anything I would go for a little bit of underexposure and that's because if you're shooting against that dark background the camera is likely to overexpose a bit too much, might cause blown highlights. So if anything they're on the underexposure and focusing if you're shooting towards that light backlit then the camera may struggle at times. On my Canon R6 the subject detection does a pretty good job here but the eye detection would definitely struggle in this situation. Now on some cameras it might be better to switch to the older style focus so maybe if you've got a DSLR by just picking one focus point and focusing on the head. Make sure to use continuous shooting, rapid frame rate on your camera, that breath can often dissipate very very quickly and you want to make sure you get the shot. Now most modern cameras will allow you to do all of these things and even on fully automatic mode you probably get these shots. So if you're a beginner thinking of trying this just go out there give it a go, doesn't have to be complicated. Now what do we shoot? What are going to be the best subjects for this type of photography? Now one of the best is going to be songbirds and the reason for that is they will have their beaks their mouths open for longer periods of time and they're going to repeat that behavior giving you more opportunities. Now despite trying I still haven't managed to capture that picture of a songbird with the breath but something I have done is photograph the breath of ducks on the water. Now there's three reasons why this works well. The first one is the temperature generally just being around the water means it's a colder temperature so the breath is more likely to show up. Two, ducks tend to be bigger subjects you know they're not really small birds they tend to be reasonably sizable and I think that helps the bigger the subject generally I think the better the breath. And third is down to displaying so ducks can do a lot of displaying behavior in late winter and early spring that just generally means more activity potentially more breath. Now one thing to mention in relation to ducks is their movement when you're trying to capture the breath. So ducks are generally always moving to some extent even if you're just drifting slightly but they can also move very very fast as well. So if you're trying to capture that breath just have a think about how fast the duck is moving. If you want to capture the breath just coming out of the beak you might need to be pretty quick as that duck swims along that breath is essentially going to be behind it maybe it's going to be above its back so it's going to depend how fast the duck is moving as to where that breath is going to be. Of course all these pictures are different that might be effect you really want. I took these pictures of a male goose sander on a cold morning on a canal shooting towards dark water and mammals are generally going to be a great subject for photographing the breath as well particularly large animals I think the more they get like us probably the easier it is to photograph the breath and particularly mammals that have their mouths open more frequently and are particularly vocal. So deer for example is a great subject for this largely down to their size and also their activity and if you think of roaring stags that's a great opportunity to do this if you can have those right conditions. Here in the UK we have a number of deer parks that are accessible so you could try this type of photography and what I'd say is if you find one individual whether it's a hind or a stag it just seems to be quite active and you're often seeing that breath now just try and stay on that individual animal and just try and react as quickly as you can. When photographing these red deer I managed to position myself to shoot towards the sun and a relatively dark background which was a line of trees. Today was just simple breathing and snorting from the deer no roaring as it wasn't in the rutting season. Now interestingly here it was actually quite windy there was a pretty strong wind coming from behind me towards the deer I still managed to get that breath so it definitely can be done but I think it's more difficult if you've got a strong wind then that breath is going to get blown away very very quickly so I think in this situation you just need to react even faster. But really anything that's big enough or breathes heavily enough should work. I captured these images of the breath of carrion crows at a local park just a really simple accessible subject close to home. One of the difficulties here was getting that dark background I had to get really low down and lie in the frost in order to do that and that is often a problem with these shots where you're trying to get that background sometimes you have to get really low in order to do that. Now I do think these images tend to work best when you're shooting into the light if you'd like a bit of help with backlighting I do have a little guide you can download just click the link in the description. So when is the best time of day to shoot these images well I think definitely the morning as I mentioned earlier around sunrise on a cold day would be great but make sure you give yourself enough time as well so ideally I would arrive at your location before sunrise that's going to give you enough time to assess things hopefully find the right subject and put yourself in the right position so arrive before sunrise give yourself the time and also you're going to have the benefit of getting that golden light first thing. Now I don't think necessarily you need to be the most experienced photographer to get these kinds of images what you do need are the right conditions patience and perseverance so it's unlikely you're going to go out there the first time and get these perfect shots it's probably going to take time might take multiple attempts until you get it and learning about wildlife behavior and perhaps your own local patch is what's going to lead to results. So if you've never tried this yourself before do you think you might be able to have a go now with these techniques and if so what subject do you have in mind where you think it might work let me know in the comments and if you'd like to see me photographing the breath of those carrion crows which is very challenging but also a lot of fun then just click the video link up on the screen. Thanks for watching!