Longtails, or any bird, are tricky to catch while in flight. Constantly flitting about, circling around, moving in and out of the focus range. And with such a big background like the ocean, getting it in focus and snapping the shot before the bird moves out of focus again relies on serendipity more than anything else. I've easily taken over two thousand pictures of longtails, but of those two thousand I've only got about a hundred decent ones, and of those hundred only a handful are actually any good. Thank goodness for digital cameras. I can't imagine trying to do this with a film camera.
Another caveat with photographing longtails is that they are more often than not above your head. The trouble with this is that the underside of the bird is just flat white; all the markings are on the top. Rarely is a shot taken underneath one of them any good. On my latest "excursion" to the beach I got one of a longtail, in flight, looking down, with the beach behind it. It was practically perfect, except for the simple fact that tourists tend to like the beach. As you can see...
It has the rocks for composition, the bright blue of the water and the pale pink of Bermuda's iconic sand. But sadly there are people. However, thanks to the magic of Photoshop, it now looks like this.
Looks a lot better, doesn't it? Amazing what can be done with Photoshop. Also, it only took me five to ten minutes to clean out all the tourists. I just need to sit myself down and do that with all those spots that showed up in my New Zealand pictures...the trouble there is that because they're in such a smooth gradient such as the sky, any scarring when I remove the dots will be immediately noticeable unless I'm very very careful. here, it didn't matter too much because of the turbulence of the water. It's a much easier trick to pull off with an out-of-focus, randomly coloured background where any mistake is not noticeable.
Here are some more pictures from the same "journey" to the beach.
Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI was using the Nikkor 18-200mm AF lens...shooting at about 1/1600 shutter speed.
Wow. I'm not much of a photographer (so, err...the photography advice went straight over my head. Not that I didn't read it; I just probably won't use it because there's no longtails here), but I like these. The second from the last is my favorite. The orange bill and the white bird (not to mention the awesomely bent wings) look pretty interesting against the dark rock.
ReplyDeleteThose rocks look really really fun to climb. :P