Getting low is often one quick step to improving your bird images. This begs the question, if low is good is lower even better? Short answer – generally yes.

By way of illustration, the top image was shot from as low as I could get at a rocky lake edge. It’s OK with a relatively clean background and relatively nice perspective on the birds. Initial impression is that you’re not looking down at them because the shooting distance with the 800mm lens was not too near resulting in a relatively shallow angle. But contrast it with the next image taken after they have moved a little and I could get my rig to water level.

The lower perspective isolates the birds far better. You can imagine that you are bobbing on the water with them rather than looking at them from the edge of the lake. Water in the foreground completely blurs out and the far shore of the lake comes into play as a natural gradient. Usually I will get as low as I can but keep an eye on the far shore of the lake to make sure that it doesn’t distract. In this case I think the blue gradient worked well. I also wrote about background considerations with low shooting angles in this previous post.

Photos with Nikon Z9 and Nikkor Z 800mm f6.3 VR S