Yesterday, my wife and I went to Prairie Oaks Metro Park in search of wading birds, We have been there many times before.

We arrived while there was still a blanket of fog over the water. I started my search for blue heron and egret at lake number three. On this particular morning I was armed with a Nikon D7500, a Sigma 150-600mm “Contemporary” superzoom lens, and a Manfrotto tripod.

I stalked a mature egret hunting for breakfast. Using shoreline brush to conceal myself I moved closer to my quarry.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of a really great tripod. I see lots of people hand-holding big glass trying to capture images of heron and egret. Often their images are blurry or soft at best because they are hand-holding the camera and lens. In the pre-digital photography days the rule was shooting with anything 200mm and over required a sturdy tripod, if you had any hope of getting published.

Today, most photographers rely on burst mode and taking lots of shots with the hope of traveling light and shooting enough that one of those images will surely be sharp enough to make the grade. I’ve even seen soft images published on websites by photographers hoping to impress a publisher.

If you want to make money with wildlife photography print sales, or you hope to be published, YOU NEED A GREAT TRIPOD, a long lens, and a fast camera. For wildlife shooting I use NIKON because their burst mode and continuous auto-focus are second to none.

For landscape I shoot a Pentax K-1 Mark II and Pentax glass. You’ll see that in my next post (shots from yesterday evening).