Birding Photography Blog – Guinea Fowl by Anna-Mart Kruger

Posted on Fri November 25, 2016.

 Birding Photography Blog: Guinea Fowl by Anna-Mart Kruger

This beautiful photograph was taken by Anna-Mart Kruger from iCapture Photo Safaris.  Anna-Mart has some great tricks up her sleeve when it comes to birding photography. One of them is finding that illusive angle from which to capture the movement. This stunning image is brought to life by the swirling dust that the guinea fowl creates.  To capture it, Anna-Mart spent some time in the low level, sunken photographic hide at Indlovu River Lodge.

Anna-Mart has some great tips to follow when photographing birds. Here are her top 5:

  1. Choose the right equipment:
    • The vast majority of professional photographers use DSLR’s. It will help you to achieve peerless control over your settings.
    • Birds are small & fast thus a long focal-length of 400mm focal length or higher would be a necessity.
  2. “Love Triangle” between Shutter Speed/ Aperture/ ISO
    • Shutter speed is like the “blinds” in your house. The longer they stay open, the more light comes in; the shorter they are open the less light comes in. To capture a bird in motion, you will need to set a camera speed of at least 1/1000th of a second.
  3. What mode to use
    • Aperture-priority mode is therefore the setting for almost all bird photography, because it lets you fix a wide aperture and have the camera set the shutter speed accordingly.
  4. How to make use of exposure compensation
    • Birds moving from bright sky to dark trees can play havoc with your metering. Use manual mode so the exposure stays the same, even if the background changes.
  5. Get eye level
    • Try to shoot eye level. You get more intimate photographs of birds since you will get an eye contact. You will get pleasing blur both in the foreground and background.

For more information on the Photographic Safari Packages at Indlovu, click here.

For more information about our next Photographic Course, contact Louisa at

Lodge: +27 (0) 15 383 9918 or on email: [email protected]