Finally come home with keepers, not soft shots.

Dear Friends,

You get home from a morning out, put the card in the computer, and start clicking through.

Soft. Soft again. An empty branch where the bird had been a second earlier. The one frame where something actually happened is blurred.

I know that feeling.

My name is Tim Laman. I photograph birds for National Geographic, where I've shot 25 feature stories, and in 2016 I was named Wildlife Photographer of the Year.

But I didn't start out anything like that. For years I came home with soft photos, and I had no idea what I was doing wrong.

At first I thought my gear was the problem.

So I bought a new camera, but barely anything changed.

Then the problem had to be me. Maybe photography was just too difficult for me.

It took me years to realize that neither of those things was true.

The real problem was that my camera was guessing.

Your camera doesn't know what you know. So it makes guesses. Brighten or darken the photo? Focus on this or that? Increase the shutter speed?

This might work well for a family photo. But when you're photographing birds, your camera often gets it wrong. It exposes for the bright sky and leaves your bird black. It grabs the leaf in front instead of the eye. Or it finds the focus a moment too late.

So what's the solution?

It's not just switching to manual mode and hoping for the best.

The trick is knowing when your camera is guessing wrong and how to fix it.

Say you're shooting a bird against a bright sky. Your camera thinks the whole picture is too bright and darkens it, so the bird comes out underexposed. That's when you need to adjust your exposure compensation.

Or you want a bird just as it lands on a branch. The camera can't find it in time, so the bird comes out soft. Then you focus on the branch before the bird arrives and lock the focus there.

There's a simple step-by-step solution to all of these scenarios. And that's exactly why I put together my masterclass:

Birds, Camera,Action

There, I've boiled down everything I've learned in nearly 30 years of shooting for National Geographic, plus films for the BBC and Netflix.

In eight easy-to-follow lessons, I'll show you how to choose the right settings, focus on birds, and handle almost any situation with your camera.

So you can consistently capture stunning bird photos.

Trust me, learning how to use your camera makes a huge difference. You won't have to feel like giving up every time your photos go wrong.

Instead, you'll feel more confident with your camera and be able to enjoy bird photography even more.

I hope this masterclass helps you as much as it has helped thousands of other photographers!

See you in lesson one,
Tim Laman