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Learning to Take Great Waterfowl Photos with Jeff Coats and His Alpen Optics
 Editor’s Note: Jeff Coats of Bel Air, Maryland, fantastic waterfowl hunter and even better waterfowl photographer, guides for sea ducks on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. Here are some tips from Coats on how to take great waterfowl pictures.
Jeff Coats began shooting photography in 1983, when his dad gave him a 35mm Pentax camera. Coats upgraded to a Canon EOS Rebel camera and started taking it with him when he went duck hunting. “The picture I most-frequently took was the hero shot, which was a picture of a hunter or a group of hunters with the ducks they’d taken,” Coats says. Then Coats became more creative with his photography and began taking pictures of ducks in the air, when the shot hit the birds and the hunters in the blind. Coats explains, “I went through three-different point-and-shoot cameras before a friend of mine, Scott Moody, called me after he’d purchased a Canon 20D camera. He recommended I buy one of those cameras. Although the camera would cost $1200 plus the cost of lenses, Scott knew I was on the water every day and that I liked to take photography. Scott also understood I wanted to one day shoot a picture good enough to grace the cover of a magazine. So, I went out and bought one of those cameras.” Coats now shoots a Canon EOS 20D with either a 100 to a 400mm lens or a big 600mm lens.
 During duck season, Coats often will shoot 40,000 photos. “If I take enough pictures, I’ll get some really-good photos,” Coats advises. “You need good optics to photograph great pictures. I look for an unusual-looking duck or a different duck in the flock. If you really want to get up-close and personal, you can use an Alpen spotting scope with a window mount, which allows you to stay well away from the ducks, see what types of ducks are in the flock and pick out the ducks you want to photograph. Then as you move in closer, your Alpen binoculars will help identify the route you want to take to the ducks and the spot where you want to set up to photograph the ducks.
The second most-important factor in waterfowl photography is lighting. I prefer late-afternoon light because usually I hunt in the morning and photograph in the afternoon. I can get some good light in the morning, but I’ll have less time when the light’s right to shoot photography in the morning than you do in the afternoon. In the morning, you have no light, then good light and later harsh light. In the afternoon, you have good light that progresses to better light and then to the best light just before dark, when the sun makes all the colors in a duck’s feathers light-up and shine. Hunting ducks with a camera isn’t that different from hunting ducks with a gun. You need to get close to them or have them come close to you. To get jump shots of ducks and geese, you’ve got to put the stalk on them. You also have to know what the ducks will do when you move in close to them. Ducks are like airplanes. To get off the water, they have to jump and fly into the wind. You want the wind coming from your back. Then when you flush the ducks, they’ll fly straight toward you instead of away from you. To get the best photos of waterfowl with a point-and-shoot camera, you’ve got to get in really close.”
  You’ll get the best waterfowl pictures when you waterfowl hunt with your buddy and let him shoot the ducks while you shoot the camera. You have to decide whether you want to hunt waterfowl or photograph them. When you’ve got ducks coming in right over the decoys with their wings cupped, feet out and necks stretched, the hunters will come up shooting their shotguns, and you need to come up shooting your camera. Even with a point-and-shoot camera, you can get pretty good pictures, if you’re the photographer and not the hunter.”
One of Jeff’s most-unusual photos is a picture of a shot hitting the bird. “You have to shoot a lot of pictures to get that kind of shot,” Coats recommends. “You must shoot with a small aperture and a fast shutter speed. Then most importantly, you have to get lucky. The pictures I shoot in the morning are hunting pictures, and the afternoon pictures are of ducks only without hunters, dogs and guns. To get up-close and personal shots, you have to know where the ducks are feeding and find the natural food they’re eating during hunting season. After hunting season, put out cracked or shelled corn, and start feeding the ducks until you can get them close enough to photograph. Generally, local mallards are fairly tame, so they’ll come in first to feed on the corn. But after a while, even the wild birds will move in close enough for you to get good shots with your camera.”
For more information about shooting waterfowl photography, write Jeff Coats at 1522 Southview Road, Bel Air, MD 21015, or call (410) 937-4034, or email jeff@pitbosswaterfowl.com, or visit www.pitbosswaterfowl.com.
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