Creative Bird Photography

Wildlife photographer Ray Hennessy challenges the standard bird portrait and demonstrates how creative choices can produce more distinctive, expressive images. Through an extensive collection of field examples, Ray explores golden-hour, directional, overcast, high-key, silhouette, and backlit conditions; shows how space, habitat, wide-angle perspectives, and close framing change the story of a photograph; and explains how action, behavior, pre-capture, hides, specialty lenses, and underwater housings can expand a photographer’s creative possibilities.

Ray also discusses the practical fieldcraft behind the images, answers audience questions about exposure and camera position, and closes with a brief look at his Lightroom and Photoshop workflow.

Presented by NANPA in partnership with Hunt’s Photo & Video. Recorded June 28, 2022.

Instructor: Ray Hennessy
Photo credit: Ray Hennessy