We worked well together, this red-flanked bluetail and I. The Craigster needed photographs. The bluetail needed invertebrates. The more I followed him, the more leaf litter I kicked up, which attracted him. He'd swoop down, seeing something in the stirred up leaves; gobble it; then fly up to a perch. I'd move in and shoot. On and on it went. We did circles for over an hour. The tolerance of the bird became so great that often I was just outside my minimum focal distance (5 m). I had to stop down, lest parts of Mr. Bluetail slip out of focus. At f9 I got an entirely sharp bird and a blurry BG. Bluetails are Old World robins. As I shot this immature male, I was reminded of Attenborough in The Life of Birds digging in a garden with a Eurasian robin nearby and theorizing that the fearlessness of robins is owing to their learning how to use large animals as tractors, turning up the leaves and soil. Photographed Sunday in a quiet corner of Binjiang Park, Shanghai.
Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 600mm
Aperture: F/9
Shutter Speed: 1/100
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: +0.33
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 1600
Subject Distance: 5.6 m
Notes: I stabilized the image by shooting in mirror-up mode and using the shutter-release cable.
Photoshoppery: Cloned out a ghostly branch using the fill tool (content-aware). Used recovery tool to cool down parts of the branch. I lassoed the bird and branch, sharpened them, then did an inverse selection to capture the BG. I then noise-reduced the BG. This shot is about 75% of full frame.







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