Southern hawker

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hand held Canon 1Dx Canon 100-400L manual focus ISO 1/1000sec f5.6, i used a wide aperture to minimise DOF. I was in two minds regards the stripes but decided to leave it, I felt the background could easily look contrived.
All C&C welcome.

[Diane Miller]

I meant to comment on this days ago and got sidetracked. I think it's incredible that you can handhold and MF these guys! Do you tweak focus to follow them, or wait till they are in the right spot? Amazing either way.

If it were me, I'd crop the OOF reeds on the left, and take some off the top and bottom to get away from squarish. Beautiful light and the BG looks very natural.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Diane, I observe them to see if I can get some kind of idea of their likely trajectory (doesn't always work needless to say). I then manually focus on the area in which I think they will pass. As they come into view I fire or tweak and fire - it depends on how they appear in the viewfinder.