{"id":125356,"date":"2022-12-09T04:50:29","date_gmt":"2022-12-09T11:50:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=125356"},"modified":"2022-12-09T05:29:41","modified_gmt":"2022-12-09T12:29:41","slug":"a-new-kingfisher-challenge-for-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2022\/12\/09\/a-new-kingfisher-challenge-for-me\/","title":{"rendered":"A New Kingfisher Challenge For Me"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kingfishers in flight as they’re about to land on their next fishing perch. Kingfisher landing shots are tough to get.<\/p>\n

I’ve been posting so many kingfisher photos lately I’d vowed to stop posting them for a while. If I didn’t have anything else new to post I wouldn’t post anything at all. But today I’m breaking that vow because most of these shots are quite different than my typical kingfisher photos.<\/em><\/p>\n

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Yesterday I decided to try something new with the male Belted Kingfisher I’ve been photographing lately. Instead of focusing on takeoff\/diving shots I wanted to try to photograph him as he was about to land on a new fishing perch just after a dive on a fish. For reasons that I won’t go into, but that bird photographers will understand, that kind of photo is much more difficult to get than takeoff\/diving shots.<\/p>\n

For a while he was giving me plenty of chances so I decided to go for it. Sometimes he had a small fish in his bill as he was about to land and sometimes he didn’t. When it comes to fishing there are no guarantees.<\/p>\n

What I really wanted was photos of him emerging from the water with a fish but in this location that wasn’t possible because of vegetation on the shore that blocked my view of most of the water he was diving into. Getting him in flight just prior to landing was the next best thing.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

That’s not to say that I didn’t go for diving shots too. I did. I like this one because his diving angle is very nearly straight down (no, I didn’t rotate the image to make his diving angle look steeper than it really was).<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

I didn’t succeed often with the pre-landing shots but I got a few. In this one he had a small fish in his bill as he was about to land on the branch just above him. On different occasions I got several other photos similar to this one but most often he had his back to me.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In this photo, the first of a series, he’s flying almost straight up and about to land in the tree after an unsuccessful dive on a fish.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In the next shot in the burst it might look to the viewer like he’s about to land on the branch right in front of his belly but that wasn’t the case. His chosen next perch was above him and to the right, in the direction he’s looking.<\/p>\n

Normally this photo would be the last shot I’d post because of composition issues in the rest of the series. But I wanted to show you where he really<\/em> landed.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

His chosen perch was still above him and mostly out of frame to the right. We can see just a tiny portion of it in the extreme upper right-hand corner of the frame.<\/p>\n

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1\/3200, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

In order to get to his destination he had to thread his way through a tangle of twigs and branches. In this shot his tiny feet are just beginning to wrap around his new perch but without zooming in further we can’t see that detail very well.<\/p>\n

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1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon R5, Canon EF500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Here he’s finally landed. Almost immediately after this shot was taken he turned around on the perch and fished the water in front of and below him with his back to me. When he eventually took off after a fish all I got was butt shots. Soft butt shots at that.<\/p>\n

I like new challenges like this, especially when I have some degree of success. I’ll keep trying for them but my new dream goal is to get quality, sharp photos of a kingfisher emerging from the water, with or even without a fish. It may never happen but that’s now my carrot on a stick.<\/p>\n

Nothing puts the pressure on and provides motivation like announcing such a goal publicly…<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kingfishers in flight as they’re about to land on their next fishing perch. Kingfisher landing shots are tough to get.\u00a0(7 photos)<\/p>\n

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