With the five presented seed plants, the natural food supply of the songbirds in your garden should be secured. Perhaps you would like to share your own experiences feeding your feathered onlookers? You are welcome to use our forum for this, possibly also with a winter picture you have taken yourself, which brings us to the next topic.
Snow and sun are a beautiful combination
Winter garden shots are often a real challenge, even for seasoned photo professionals. Nevertheless, in these circles there is a far-reaching opinion that a particularly professional camera is required for this, but that it is mainly down to the skill of the photographer. With which we would all be able to take great winter pictures even with a smartphone in the lower middle class, i.e. in the price group between 150 and 200 euros. Our tips for this:
- Preparation of photographer and equipment: Snapshots in the garden are often not done in a few minutes, so the first thing to do is to dress warmly. The camera and the highly sensitive lenses also need a little time to get used to the cold outside. In the event that parts of the camera fog up, a soft, dry cloth will help.
- Taking the time of day and weather conditions into account: sunrise and sunset are particularly good for capturing the garden landscape in the picture using the various lighting effects. Rising and falling wafts of fog in the middle of the glowing snow crystals even increase this unique effect, so that even an otherwise monotonous, uncultivated garden area can become an atmospheric motif.
- What should be in the picture: A little artistic flair and the right placement of the main motif are crucial to ensure that a photo does not become boring. If, for example, the birds are to be captured in the picture while they are eating, the bird house does not belong in the middle, but looks better placed in the left or right third.
- Use individual settings: Most cameras have an automatic mode that is supposed to make further settings unnecessary and also enables inexperienced subject hunters to take technically (almost) perfect pictures. However, it is usually more visually impressive if the manual setting options such as shutter speeds, aperture values, exposure compensation and various creative filters and motif scenarios are used, especially for landscape shots in winter.
However, it is better to make the optimal settings in a well-tempered "warm room", because in severe frost even a slight exhalation in the immediate vicinity of the camera can cause the display or the lens to fog up. And, we'd like to say it again: We're looking forward to lots of new garden photos from our newsletter readers in the garden journal forum. The way to register is here…