Strategies for Shooting
Birds in Flight
I
f you feel frustrated when you try to take pictures of birds in flight, join the crowd. We all do. In my opinion, it is the single most difficult thing to shoot in nature photography.
Here is the problem: You want to fill the frame to a certain degree so the bird looks impressive without too much cropping, but by doing that with a long lens, depth of field becomes minimal. The bird is moving fast, and keeping the bird in focus is a daunting challenge. With the reduced depth of field, it’s tough to get a winning picture. Doable, but tough. Compounding the challenge is exposure. If the bird is flying against a bright sky or the patchy lighting of tree branches against the sky like the macaw, below, taken on my Costa Rica photo tour, or against middle toned marsh grass, the background affects the exposure significantly. You can feel defeated at the outset simply because the obstacles to getting a
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