Amazing Emu: Silly And Fast Bird With Really Scary Eyes
Curious emu keeping an eye on me from a relatively close distance.
The emu is fascinating and, potentially, dangerous. But, in the right circumstances, great photos are possible of this fast running, silly bird with really scary eyes.
I photographed this emu from about a meter away. It was simply a matter of poking my camera’s lens through the top layer of a wire fence and employing a few basic fundamentals of portrait photography to make the image.
While a potentially dangerous animal in the wild, this particular emu spends its days on a small farm and, while not exactly domesticated, it’s become somewhat accustomed to humans.
Nonetheless, emus scare me.
I was glad there was a fence between us and I was ready to pull my camera away, at a moments notice, should the emu decide to take a peck at any shiny reflection formed on the front of my camera's lens.
The Emu In Profile
A fascinating animal with a steely gaze, the placement of the emu’s eyes within its skull allowed the bird to simultaneously present a profile while looking directly at me.
Spooky!
Photographing with direct, early morning light provided a wonderfully soft quality of light that illuminated the color of the bird's eye and the delicate textures surrounding it.
Portrait Photos - A Simple Recipe
I made the image with a Canon 5D camera and Canon EF 180 mm f/3.5 Macro L series lens at an aperture of f/5.6.
At the relatively close camera-to-subject distance in question the lens and aperture combined to produce a lovely shallow depth of field.
The fact that the emu was lit directly by the low angle of the sun providing me with a 1/500 second shutter speed at ISO 400.
That made it possible to hand hold that quite heavy and slow to focus (non image stabilized) lens quite steadily.
Image processing was conducted in Adobe Lightroom and Adobe Photoshop.
While it’s dangerous to get too close to a whole range of snakes, reptiles and spiders there are plenty of places where it’s possible to photograph Australia’s incredible wildlife in relative safety.
Enjoy the outdoors when you can and don’t be afraid to explore opportunities to photograph Australia’s rich and diverse wildlife, whether in their natural habitat or by visiting zoos and wildlife parks.