On the coast, I enjoyed a couple of hours watching and photographing Herring Gulls (Larus argentatus), floating on air currents along the top of the cliffs. This one was a juvenille, which began to turn, and came quite low overhead.
This type of photography can be quite a challenge, but with some practise you can master panning, following the subject. You have to try to keep your focus, of course, and you have to watch you don’t follow the gull directly into the glare of the sun. I took over 300 photographs in this session, and hoped some came out reasonably well, at least.
Photographs taken of Herring Gull (Larus argentatus) July 2016, East Cliff, Bournemouth, Dorset. © Pete Hillman 2016. Camera used Nikon D3200, with Nikon 70-300mm telephoto zoom lens.
Nice shots! Birds in flight photography is not something I’d try on a regular basis, so many factors to take into account (as you pointed out) that it’s more of a challenge than what I want. You appear to be more than ready for it. I’ll just worry about if there’s breeze on the flowers and I’ll have to adjust shutter speed. 🙂
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Thank you David. I had only tentatively experimented before, with buzzards over my local fields, and found it quite a struggle as they either moved too fast or were too far away. The gulls I found were fairly low, some even at eye-level on the cliffs, and were slowly drifting on the warm air currents, which gave me a bit more chance of following them and snapping them. 🙂
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These are excellent. Capturing birds in flight is no small feat!
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Thank you Belinda 🙂 It was a challenge, but I enjoyed it 🙂
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