9,000th Post: My Best Battling Crane Shot
The first 8,000 were a piece of cake, but the last 1,000 have been a long time coming! Many thanks to everyone who helps make BPN such a great forum! Now, about the photo. Many of the best Crane battles occur in less than ideal light, often before the sun rises in the morning. This is not surprising, because the greatest concentration of Cranes occurs when they are roosting overnight. Another issue is DOF; Cranes are large and when you put two of them together DOF can become a very real problem. The third big problem is that due to the dynamic nature of the battle, key anatomic features are often hidden by flailing body parts. The last potential problem is that there are often lots of other Cranes surrounding and/or blocking the action; if nothing else they can be visually distracting. I was fortunate on a number of counts with this image, which was taken last month. I got some early sun on my subjects; you can tell that the sun was quite low on the horizon because the water is still unlit. Despite the complex interaction and the fact that I was shooting wide open, the birds heads were both in my plane of focus. The Cranes were relatively isolated from other birds, although I did remove parts of two birds in the BG. And no important body parts are hidden from view. One other bit of PS work: I opted to fix a nicitating membrane over the eye of the bird on the right. I hope you enjoy the image!
Canon 1D Mark IV, 600mm, f/4, 1/1250, ISO 800, manual exposure, hand held
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Huge congrats on your milestone, and thank you for all your help on the site, not to mention your educated critiques. Now the image - the IQ in this is exquisite, warm light and colours look great, and of course well timed to capture this action. Just love the trailing droplets from the crane on the left. A traditional landscape crop may work with the cranes placed centrally. Congrats on a fine image.
Originally Posted by Jay Gould
