How I become a bird photographer
This is a story about how I become a bird photographer, a hobby I strongly encourage for everyone.
My first camera was held in my hand when I was about 10 years old. It was a simple film based compact camera with a small zoom lens. My uncle taught me the basics and somehow I could capture some nice photos. I was even made the family photographer, helping to take pictures during family events.
As I grew older, I went on to have larger cameras (APS film), take videos (8mm film and digital video) and moved on to digital cameras. When I have my first kid, I started to invest in digital SLR cameras, so that I could take better pictures for my budding family. From Canon 50D, to 5DMk2 and then to 6DMk2, I usually take pictures of my kids when we go for vacation tours:
But when Covid-19 arrives, we no longer can go for vacation tours. As I was jobless for a few months during the covid days (see My Covid Years ), I started to take walks in nature parks in Singapore. I started to use my Olympus Pen-F as it was more compact for me to bring along in my nature walks.
My wife and my younger son accompany me in many of the walks. We have since been to the following nature parks in Singapore: Coney Island, Rail Corridor, Diary Farm, Bukit Batok, Jurong Lake, Botanical Garden, Pierce Reservoir, Pasir Ris Park, Fort Canning Park, Bedok Reservoir Park, Bishan Park, Labrador Park, Windsor Nature Park, West Coast Park, Changi Beach Park, Sungei Buloh, Thomson Nature Park, and so on.
It was my son that got me interested in taking pictures of birds. As he was showing a lot of interest in birds, I bought him a Canon Zoom camera (monocular camera with picture taking feature). This provides him a means to look at birds far away and to be able to take a picture if necessary. We started to look for different birds in the parks, and eventually I bought zoom lens and other accessories (monopod, tele converter) to let me take pictures of birds.
Here is one of the first few photos I took: (at Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve)
And here are a couple more recent photos I took:
(this is taken at Jurong Bird Park)
(this is taken at Pasir Ris Park, one of my favourite birds, the Stork-billed Kingfisher)
Why I got interested in taking pictures of bird is not that they look great and that it is a good physical exercise (for health reasons) to look for them. I am just totally intrigued by everything about them, their external appearance (their plumage), their life cycles (mating, laying eggs, constant feeding of the young, and fledging), their ability to fly (different species have different flying specialities, such as speed of peregrine falcon, migratory birds, etc.), their feeding (they just swallow their food), and etc. There are 10,000 species of birds and every species has something unique about them.
I think bird photography is for everyone. All you need is an eye for birds, its beauty and the curiosity to understand more about them. Personally, I believe birds is probably the best evolved animal on this planet and their diversity and pervasiveness are great proof points of their success. As someone with computer programming as part of my profession, I would regard their DNA as the best foundation to study how life evolves on Earth, that could possibly serve as lessons for us. Hope you could also be inspired to try birding.
