When in position with an interesting subject, design and composition will make the difference between a documentary photo and a work of photographic art (Great Egret photo by Melissa Groo).

Photography can bring us closer to birds and enable us to tell inspiring and powerful stories about birds. Their beauty, diversity, and ability to fly make them fascinating subjects for anyone. Now, award-winning wildlife photographer Melissa Groo will guide you in this self-paced, online course provided by Cornell’s Bird Academy. Learn about cameras, lenses, tripods, blinds, and other gear. Pick up tips for finding and getting closer to birds in conscientious ways. The field techniques you learn in this course will propel your bird photography to a whole new level.

Find out how to get beyond the auto mode of your camera to compose more powerful images, learn to optimize your camera’s settings for bird photography, and how to match your gear to your goals, especially your camera and lenses. This course is designed to help you take the best photos with the gear you already have, but also includes some recommendations if you’re looking to improve your photography gear.

This interesting bird photo course is designed for beginning photographers, so if you are just starting out, it will give you all the tools you need to build your skills. But there is also a wealth of content that is useful for more advanced photographers. If you’re already familiar with using digital cameras, you will still benefit from the course’s bird-specific training, which is designed to help you find and take photos of these colorful, fast-moving subjects.

Birds in flight can be one of the most challenging aspects of bird photography. Melissa devotes an entire lesson purely to helping you build skills to master flight photography techniques. This online course is On Sale now through August 28, and you can get a feel for the high quality of the materials provided in her how-to video from this free preview of Bird Photography with Melissa Groo. And for more information you can refer to Bird Photography with Melissa Groo | Bird Academy • The Cornell Lab (allaboutbirds.org)