Swallow Interaction

[Austin Thomas]

Here is another from my recent session with the Swallows.

This time the light was a little too harsh giving me different problems to solve. On a positive note, the light enabled my to select a higher shutter speed and gain some valuable depth of field. On a negative note, the Swallow in flight kept casting its shadow onto the perched Swallow. This was most frustrating and a lot of images were discarded due to these shadows. The position of the birds in this particular image allowed at least some light to fall directly onto the faces of both birds, so I decided to keep this one.

Plenty more images from this "Swallows in flight" project can be found HERE

C&C welcome.

Canon 1DMK4, 800mm, f11, 1/1000 ISO800

Austin

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Austin, terrific interaction. Like the way you caught them looking at each other with open bills. Bird shots that need both high shutter speed and good DOF are always hard. Considering everything, I think you did a splendid job. Fill flash could have helped a bit perhaps...

[Arthur Morris]

Yes you did well with the rather harsh, off-angled (from our left) light. Good that you got at least a sliver of the face and eye of the front bird. It seems that the sharpest focus is on the face of the front bird rather than on the face of the back bird (where I believe that it should be with that cool pose....

[arash_hazeghi]

great action and BG, you had some harsh light. Sharpness and IQ are not great but the action is very dynamic.

[Ofer Levy]

Impressive action and behaviour shot. Heads look sharpened rather than sharp but not too bad. Shutter speed is way too low for this action IMO.

[Austin Thomas]

Hi all,

Thanks for your feedback, which I will take on board. This project is still running at the moment before she goes to nest, so hopefully I can improve over the coming days.

Thanks again,

Austin