Two collared doves in a display of love and affection…
It begins with a kiss…
… and ends with a flutter.
Two more shots from today after all that (very brief) excitement 😉
First a rampaging moorhen…
Moorhen racing across Falmer Pond
And second the three ducks from the other day… this time out for a leisurely swim.
Trio of ducks on Falmer Pond
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens.
One of my regular photographic challenges (self-imposed) is photographing swallows (or swifts) while they swoop over water or across fields. Mostly I walk away with no success at all, but in the last week I’ve managed a few that while far from perfect are at least usable. The difficulties are many: keeping the bird in the frame while it speeds across the lens; keeping the lens in focus and relatively steady; having a fast enough shutter speed; and capturing the bird while it’s facing in an acceptable direction (youu don’t really want back views).
As I said, these ain’t perfect, but hey are among my better efforts. I’ll start with one from last week diving over the pond and – double bonus points – with its beak wide open!
Swallow diving over Falmer Pond
The rest are from today, when the light was decidedly iffy. The ISO was ramped up to 1600 as getting anything usable depends on speed. Ths is actually a fledgling, but it can still motor!
Fledgling swallow in flight over fields at Falmer
Another one with mouth open! More bonus points 🙂
To make up for the roughness of those, one ‘proper’ photo, also from today. I took quite a few of this group of ducks passing the time of day, but this is the pick.
Three ducks at Falmer Pond
Camera note: all photos taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens.
There may be something of a theme developing here (see yesterday’s post) as I’m still focused on the dark side of the camera, and once again these are shot at a high ISO (1600) with lots of negative exposure compensation. The main sequence is a heron which after staying in fairly open areas finally pitched up just in front of some trees that are adjacent to the pond. This provided the dark backdrop I was looking for. There was enough light coming in to bring out the heron’s colour, but exposing for the background would have washed everything out. Hence dialling down the compensation to around -2. I lifted the whites in processing these, and damped down small parts of the background with the burn tool.
Grey heron at Falmer Pond
Shame about the duck in the foreground, but I liked the posture.
This is my personal pick. Nice and clean.
That proved to be a fruitful corner of the pond. While I was watching the heron I noticed a moorhen going back and forth. Tucked away under the low branches and among the tree rots a pair of chicks were scrambling around. I had to squat down right at the edge of the pond, with branches pressing all around to get any clear line on the chicks, and even then they were mostly obscured by foliage. I got three usable shots of which this is the pick. Compensation on this is a modest -1 (anything more would have lost the detail on the bird).
Moorhen chick among the tree roots at Falmer.
Camera note: all shots taken with the Canon 7D Mark II and EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L USM IS Mark II lens.
