Snow Geese take flight

[david cramer]

A few days ago I was fortunate to be able to photograph geese and cranes from a relatively close distance using my vehicle as a blind. One of my favorites takes was a series of some geese taking flight. This image captured three of them taking off in succession, with a crane ducking to avoid getting hit. It's an intimate look at these birds I normally don't get to have.

D3 with 500vr, f/8, 1/2500, ev -0.67, iso 800 full framed uncropped.

[Desmond Chan]

Where I am, it is very easy to get close to the snow geese. They don't fly away from you. I've seen a guy walk right through a flock of thousands of snow geese that landed in a field. The snow geese simply made way for the him they didn't take flight. I once was able to move to less than 10 feet from them shooting with a 17-55mm lens on a D300. Again, the geese would simply turn and move away slowly.

I shot this with a compact digi-cam:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=49700

(not my neighborhood)

As you can see, some of them were right next to the roadway on the sidewalk. None of the vehicles that went by caused any disturbance to the geese.


Good shot by the way !