Latest news with #birdphotography
RNZ News
08-08-2025
- Science
- RNZ News
How to take beautiful wildlife photos with your smartphone: a beginner's guide
By Peter de Kruijjff, ABC enviroment reporter Bird photography takes patience but can be done with a smartphone if you have a tripod and remote camera trigger. Photo: ABC Science/ Peter de Kruijff Lying belly down on the grass, I saw my quarry cruising along the bank of Perth's Swan River. It's a pelican paddling towards my position. I'm a few metres back from the river's edge where I've set up a tripod low on a small sandy shore. With the click of button on a remote trigger, I take a snap with my smartphone. If you want to start getting into nature photography, there's a lot you can do with your phone before you consider getting a dedicated camera. I've teamed up with photographers to see how to get the best out of a smartphone to take wildlife images, use macro functions to snap tiny creatures, and catch birds in action with minimal impact on them or their habitat. One of the easiest ways to get into nature photography, and that doesn't require the most spectacular image quality, is to shoot for citizen science projects. Sites such as iNaturalist allow users to upload their snaps online, where a community of experts and other amateurs can help identify what you've captured on camera. This way, you can take photos and learn about different species at the same time. Uploading location data can also help scientists better understand the range limits of a species or even changes in its population over time. But you do need to be careful about what you share on open sites and not swamping single locations where a species has been recently sighted (more on this below). Jumping spiders are fairly easy subjects to engage for macro photography as they will turn their body towards movement. Photo: ABC Science/ Jacinta Bowler To get started, you can use the stock camera app that comes with your phone. From a technical perspective, phone cameras tend to have small sensors, which means they need a lot of light to take sharper images. That means while shooting during the day is generally fine, you'll need additional light to shoot at night, according to James Dorey, a evolutionary biologist and photographer at the University of Wollongong. "You'll probably need to have a torch or have a friend with another phone that can light your subject from the side." Check whether your phone has an optical or digital zoom function too. Optical zoom is when your camera lens actually adjusts to magnify your subject whereas digital zoom often crops an image, making the quality no sharper than if you didn't zoom in. Dr Dorey also recommends taking multiple shots from different angles if you are shooting something for identification purposes. This means scientists can get a good look at colours, patterns and other key features of an animal. "Bees, for example, it's often really important to get a good photo of the wings and the veins on the wings," Dr Dorey says. By targeting flowering plants you will likely come across pollinators such as bees. Photo: ABC Science/ Peter de Kruijff If you're looking to get a little fancier with your nature phone photography, the next step might be macro. Macro photography is where tiny subjects look life-sized. Dr Dorey, who is also an award-winning macro photographer, usually uses a digital camera but says phones are improving in capability. "A lot of phones have multiple lenses now and are actually pretty good at getting macro," he says. Invertebrates, such as a spider in your house or a bee in the garden, make great macro targets that you don't have to chase around too much. To get a good close-up, you simply need to switch to the macro mode and get your lens nice and close to the subject, about 2 to 5 centimetres away. If your subject is on the ground or close to a surface, you can spin your phone around so the top is balanced on the ground (so the lens is at the same level) for a steadier shot. Larger insects like dragonflies, with their compound eyes and intricate wing vein patterns, make good macro subjects for phones. Photo: ABC Science/ Peter de Kruijff Keep the subject in the centre of your frame for the best performance out of your lens. Whether it's bugs or larger species like lizards and frogs, try to get the lens at your subject's eye level for the most engaging portrait. Using macro mode often requires a lot of light. In dim conditions, it may be too difficult to take a photo just holding a phone in your hands. One way to get around this is to use a cheap tripod and a LED ring light. Ring lights stop you covering your subject in your shadow. Little red flying-foxes fly over the Ord River in Kununurra. Photo: ABC Science/ Peter de Kruijff A lot of nature photography is done with cameras using large telescopic lenses. While you can buy external magnifying lenses to attach to your smartphone, award-winning West Australian bird photographer Georgina Steytler says phone photography requires you work smarter. "The best tip to get bird photos is to sit down and let the birds come to you," she says. Your choice of location is, unsurprisingly, important. If you lie on a bank next to a lake or wetland, at some point a bird is probably going to swim or wade past. You can get closer to your subject by using a selfie stick (the extra cost is the self-awareness that people will think you're self-obsessed among the ducks). There are also selfie sticks that double as a tripod and come with a remote control for triggering photos via a Bluetooth connection to your phone. That means you can be even further away from the birds and hopefully get a closer shot. For the best shots, use the pro mode on your phone. In this mode you can pick a shutter speed that is at least 1/250 of a second, or 4 milliseconds, fast. This should get you a freeze frame of a subject that's not moving too much, but if the subject is a little blurry, you may need to go faster with your shutter speed. One good thing about phones is you can see on the screen whether the shot is too dark or light to take, and adjust your setting accordingly. The background of your photo is another element to consider, Steytler says. "Try to pick birds like a seagull on a bench or standing on a pole because you have a clear background." Steytler says standard photography tips such as shooting around sunrise and sunset also apply to phone shoots. Free editing apps can not only sharpen up images, but they can also combine shots to create dynamic images. To do this, Steyler recommends taking a photo with a black background first by underexposing it (this is where not enough light is captured so the image is dark). That image can then be combined with another shot taken at the same angle where you focus on getting a good exposure of the bird. Taking photos can be a nice way to immerse yourself in nature or learn something new, but how you go about it is just as important (so you're not derided like an influencer grabbing a wombat). Birdlife Australia has got a set of guidelines for birdwatching and photography. Edith Cowan University conservation biologist Rob Davis, who co-authored a study on biodiversity damage from social media, also has several tips for ethical photography, including: Dr Davis says it is generally illegal in Australia to handle native wildlife and flora without a permit. Besides that, you can inadvertently spread killer diseases. "If you handle frogs you can spread chytrid [an infectious amphibian disease] from animal to animal," Dr Davis says. Besides, many species react badly to human interference. Some bats will abandon roosting caves for good if disturbed by people. Dr Davis notes another example where photographers damaged the ground burrows of rainbow bee eaters at a suburban lake after people became aware of their seasonal arrival. "Think before you share," he says. "There's really rare stuff my wife and I have seen which we don't put on any platform. "That can be a good choice sometimes as sites do get trashed." -ABC
The Sun
09-06-2025
- Health
- The Sun
Horrifying photos show the true cause of man's itchy eye – after he found a LEECH feasting on his eyeball
A BRIT travel agent's trip to test holiday hotspots became a "nightmare" when he discovered a leech sucking on his EYEBALL. Tony Exall was on a jungle tour near West Papua, Indonesia on May 22 this year when his left eye began to irritate him. 6 6 6 The 58-year-old blamed it on sweat or a tiny bug but two hours later a fellow visitor spotted that he actually had a leech on his eyeball. A horrifying photo shows Tony's bloodshot eye with the small black bloodsucker latched to the white area called the sclera. Tony grew concerned it might wriggle its way behind his eye so ended his trip early to find medical help. After six hours and trips to two hospitals a doctor extracted the leech using tweezers - despite the creature pulling on his eyeball tissue to hang on. Tony, who owns travel company Philippine Dive Holidays, was in Indonesia to test out locations for customers when he decided to head on a photography trip. The travel agent avoided catching an infection and achieved his aim of snapping a rare king bird-of-paradise minutes before the incident. He posted the video to Facebook where users described it as 'stuff nightmares are made of' and like 'something from a horror movie'. Tony, from Oxted, Surrey, said: "I came over here to investigate different places to work with in Indonesia so I thought, while I'm here, I want to do a bit of bird snapping. "We were waiting for the bird to turn up and I was sweating buckets. "I could feel something in my eye but I just thought it was a bug. I tried to get rid of it but couldn't so I tried to ignore it. NHS animated video on eye health "There were leeches everywhere and I must have used the back of my hand to wipe the sweat so I essentially wiped it into my eye. "A couple hours later we went to move on to somewhere else and one of my spotters pointed out the leech in my eye. "My biggest concern was that it would get round the back of my eye. He tried to pull it out with his fingers. "He was pinching my eyeball to get it out but the leech was fixed onto my eyeball. I tried rubbing it but I couldn't get it out." Tony had trekked two hours through the jungle near Malagufuk, West Papua, to reach an area known for king bird-of-paradise sightings. After having the leech pulled from his eye, Tony was prescribed eye drops and antibiotics to make sure he didn't develop an infection. Tony said: "We went to two hospitals to find someone that knew something about eyes. "At first he tried to remove it and that was quite sore because a leech grabs hold of something and starts to suck the blood. "He started to gently pull the leech which was quite sore as it was something pulling on my eyeball. "My next concern was how do you get it off my eye without leaving anything behind. "You hear these stories about tropical diseases and infections and having one in your eye is not the best place to have one. "The doctor then squirted some anaesthetic drops onto my eye, got some tweezers and pop, off it came. 6 6 6 "The tissue of my eye was being pulled. I have never had that sensation before." After sharing the "squeamish" photos of his eye on Facebook, freaked-out users were quick to comment on his bizarre experience. One user said: "I'm not usually squeamish but that is stuff from horror movies! Hope everything is okay now." Another added: "Omg you need a trigger warning on this post. Sounds awful, hope you recover quickly." A third said: "Stuff nightmares are made of." A fourth added: "Dangerous stuff, this photography."
