A slow exposure trying to catch the abstract beauty of birds in flight.
Iso-200, 500 mm, F 32, 25th, D 500, handheld, 40% of full frame
They are definitely really beautiful birds, David. This is a difficult feat you are undertaking so kudos to you for doing this. I am not quite sure if the image is working for me but this is true 98% of speed blur images that I have seen so far. I think it will be more successful if there is some kind of shape to the overall flocks but I am shooting from the hip. I don’t have any successful image of this kind.
I think this turned out pretty well. There’s nice wing blur, yet some of the Dunlin’s heads are fairly sharp. I’m sure I’ve tried hundreds of time to get sandpipers in flight with very little success. I get blurred images at 1/000 of a second, but without the nice abstract feel of this shot. Maybe stopping way down is one of the keys.
This came out quite well, David. I like the amount of blur you obtained and the streamlines created in the water. Nice work.
This is very difficult to do as everyone has noticed. One has no control over the position of the birds. I had to look for the best distribution that made sense. I suppose if one was thinking about composition, some of the partial birds could be blended/cloned away. Here is a similar image shot at a fast shutter speed,into a group of what I think are Western sandpipers.
Very nice shot of the flock in flight. What where the techs? (I’m trying to learn how to get these nice shots.) I think these are Short-billed Dowitchers-white eyebrow, long bill, rufous chest and belly.
David, this grouping works super well for me. especially the ones with their wings fully stretched. Super nice.
The technical details on the faster shutter speed image of the Dowitcher’s or Western Sandpipers were:
iso-1600, 500 mm +1.4 extender, F8, 3200th, D 500, handheld, 50% of full frame.
Although we did see ShortBilled Dowitcher’s, they were all solitary so that’s why am thinking this is Western sandpipers but I could be wrong.
With respect to shooting this type of image, it’s generally a crapshoot; pointing the camera into field of flying birds and getting lucky that one has a sensible unobstructed for the most part pattern.
There was a fair amount of small wave action which created a challenging background and I basically tried to make it as unobtrusive as possible by increasing the contrast globally in this case.
Here is another image probably of the same birds in-flight. I’m sitting here looking at the Sibley Field guide to birds of Western North America and I’m still having a difficult time distinguishing between the Short Billed Dowitcher’s and Western Sandpipers. Maybe there someone out there who really knows.
The yellow legs would rule out Western Sandpiper and the size rules out Least Sandpipers. Dowitchers have yellow legs and the length of the bill being longer than the head would suggest a Dowitcher over a sandpiper. A nice book on the subject is “The Shorebird Guide”, by O’Brien, Crossley and Karlson.
Thanks, I agree now.
