Andre

In the past years, I have been focused on landscape photography and asltrophotograpy. With the quarantine and Covid-19 I started to appreciate the birds. An American Robin made a nest in my deck and I started to follow the process day after day and I was able to capture since the very first egg until the birds were ready to fly. Most of my pictures were made with a Canon 70-200 mm lens with a 6D body. This made me to be even more motivated to photograph birds in their natural habitat and I decided to go to "field", in a preservation park few miles away of where I live, Buffalo-NY. The diversity of birds is amazing. But with few shots I realized 200 mm maximum would not be enough for taking the photos I would like to capture. I had to crop the images too much and the final images had a lot of noise, as expected. The AF system of the 6D is not great, it was enough for my landscape photography but not for birds. So I started to research camera bodies and lenses that would fit in my budget (honestly they didn't fit but when you are motivated who cares lol). Then I bought a Sigma 150-600 mm and a Canon 5D Mk IV. I saw that many bird photographers use a 7D, but I was not happy with the idea of a crop sensor again (nothing against crop sensors, my first camera was a T5 and I was very happy with it, but since I moved to full frame I couldn't use a crop sensor anymore). Now I'm happy with the possibility of getting much more close to the birds, my photos looks like more sharp and the better AF system of the 5D Mk IV reduced the challenges I have been used to face in the first weeks. There is a lot to learn yet, not only about photography but about the birds itself, it's an amazing new world to me. I'm attaching a photo of an American Goldfinch that I shot yesterday close to my house. Nothing outstanding but I liked the bird resting its head on the tree branch. Looks like he is thinking and regretting something. I enjoy to see this types of situations in which the birds are not in the standard pose to the camera. They are very beautiful, but I do enjoy to see something funny or that connects our behaviors to the image. Anyway, I'm not a professional photographer but I really want to improve day after day, that's why I'm dedicated to learn more about my subjects and adapting my existing gear to new ones to meet these goals. If you want to see more about my journey, feel free to follow me at IG with @andreschiavonimages.