The event that led me to start bird photography │ Atsuhito
Hello! Hi everyone. I am Atsuhito, a bird photographer.
Now I have been living in Japan for 28 years.
I would be very happy if you all could stay with me until the end.
The event that led me to start bird photography
I started photography when I was a high school student in my late teens, but I had never thought about taking pictures of wild birds.
I had only knowledge of crows, sparrows, hawks, swallows, white-eyes, seagulls, pelicans, kites, and wagtails.
I have only heard the voice of a Japanese bush warbler.
I had often seen them in my daily life and heard their names.
However, I became tremendously interested in wild birds.
So much so that I now photograph birds in heavy rain. Even in storms.
The kicker was that I entered a forest where I could look around and be surrounded by wild birds
After photographing a variety of subjects, it was only recently that I finally decided to make a living as a bird photographer.
The moment I first encountered and developed a passion for wild birds was in March of this year, 2023. At the time, I only had a Nikon D5600 and a 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens.
One day I was visiting an island in the sea called the Seto Inland Sea in Japan.
The purpose was to photograph the island’s scenery, night views, and starry skies.
Occasionally, I would photograph wagtails and dragonflies, but I thought of them only as accents to the landscape.
I stayed in my car for the night, had coffee and food at the top of the mountain early in the morning at 5:00 a.m., and photographed the sunrise from the mountain.
After photographing for a while, I saw an incredible sight.
A wild bird I had encountered only once before in my elementary school days, a white-eye ( Scientific name: Zosterops japonicus. Japanese say: Mejiro.), was right in front of me.
No way! It was the same bird I had met that day! I was so excited.
Later, I made the mistake of trying to get closer.
Wild birds are very wary and will run away if you walk a few dozen meters in a normal direction.
I understood instantly, putting off their attention, I hide my breath and still under the cherry tree.
Then many wild birds would come.
It was an unbelievable sight.
It was like a fairyland.
In addition to white-eyes, there were many other wild birds whose names I did not know at the time.
I met a red-flanked bluetail, a titmouse, a bush warbler, a pygmy woodpecker, and a rufous-cheeked woodpecker.
I still remember how excited I was when I took down the shutter.
I will never forget it.
After that, I bought a new camera.
I got a new camera, the Nikon Z9, which I am using now.
It is very expensive.
And I also bought a lens.
This, too, is expensive.
I used to have an APSC model with a small sensor size, but I switched to a mirrorless camera with a full-size sensor at once.
I also bought the Z600mm TC VR S.
This is a very crazy lens.
Because it is the price you can buy a car for.
I found a subject that I was willing to go that far to shoot.
I also bought the best printer I could find and decided to sell the photos I printed myself.
The theme I am currently trying to convey is how family should be and the love we should learn.
When you observe wild birds and animals, you can see their different ways of life.
The love of these devoted birds, which even humans cannot imitate, was a strong thing to learn.
Then, after leaving the island, I went to Tottori Prefecture, located to the north.
Here, too, my objective was to cover the sea and other landscapes to photograph them.
To my surprise, I noticed a bird of prey on a rock.
Its name was an osprey.
I began to think that I wanted to photograph these distant subjects without stressing each other and preserve them for posterity.
So I have come to a style of shooting with focal lengths of lenses such as 600mm, 840mm, or even 1680mm if a teleconverter is attached.
What I want to share with you on YouTube I have spent many months before starting YouTube.
It’s safe to say that everything has been in preparation for this day to start.
