![\"black-billed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/black-billed-magpie-1289-ron-dudley.jpg\")
<\/p>\nPhotographing birds as they take off is tricky but with a little luck and perseverance\u00a0it can be done.\u00a0 Landing shots are\u00a0much more difficult and often require creative technique.<\/p>\n
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1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc, canvas added for composition, \u00a0not baited, set up or called in<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n This image was taken three days ago as this Black-billed Magpie took off from its nest bush after delivering nesting material.\u00a0 I have a few other shots similar to this and I like them a lot but they always remind me that there’s something missing.\u00a0 I want to get the tail fully flared because I really like its shape when it’s completely spread out.\u00a0 That’s much more likely to happen\u00a0when the bird is landing than it is during take-off\u00a0but landing shots are very difficult for me to pull off, especially while shooting from my vehicle.<\/p>\n To avoid disturbing these birds at the nest I photograph them from my pickup parked on a road which means that my window opening severely restricts the left to right angle that I can shoot.\u00a0\u00a0So when\u00a0I\u00a0notice an incoming magpie by the time I can see it through my viewfinder\u00a0I usually don’t have time to lock focus on the bird before it lands.\u00a0 Focus lock is\u00a0made even more difficult because there’s a mountain in the background instead of featureless sky.<\/p>\n So occasionally out of severe frustration I impulsively try a Hail Mary tactic…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I call it “hip-shooting”, (definition – an action or reaction that is quick and often reckless, as in the old west during gunfights when participants drew from a holster on the hip and fired quickly without aiming).\u00a0 Without taking the time to locate the bird in my viewfinder as it approaches I simply point my very long lens in the direction I think it will land and fire off a burst as\u00a0it comes in\u00a0to\u00a0land on a spot on the bush that I can’t\u00a0predict. \u00a0 This is very difficult to do\u00a0at long focal lengths (with the crop factor of the 7D and the teleconverter I’m shooting at 1120 mm) because you have very little wiggle room to get the bird in frame (think of trying to light up a bird in flight with\u00a0a very narrow-beam flashlight when you can’t see the light).\u00a0\u00a0 When I try this method, probably over 95% of the time I’ve either missed the bird completely or I’ve clipped body parts.<\/p>\n To complicate matters even further you not only need to get the entire bird in frame, you must get it in sharp focus.\u00a0 This requires pre-focusing which means you have to anticipate how far the bird will be away from you when you fire the burst.<\/p>\n So for this shot I pre-focused on some twigs (out of frame) that I\u00a0judged to be about a foot behind the nest, waited for the bird to come in and fired a burst as I looked down the barrel of my lens instead of through the viewfinder.\u00a0 This time I\u00a0miraculously got four shots without clipping any body parts.\u00a0 Since I had pre-focused they\u00a0were naturally\u00a0of varying sharpness as the bird came toward me.\u00a0 There’s no\u00a0light in the eye,\u00a0I really don’t like the out of focus blob (top of nest)\u00a0at lower left and the image is tight at the bottom but I got the\u00a0tail shape I was after, a nice wing spread and nesting material in the beak.\u00a0 Maybe next time I’ll get a similar shot without the blurry nest in the frame.<\/p>\n Hip-shooting is truly a long-shot technique but it has some potential for success.\u00a0 Unlike film, pixels are cheap so I’m sure I’ll keep trying.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n Note: I realize that many readers aren’t particularly interested in technique – only the results.\u00a0 But there’s enough photographers who see my posts that occasionally I can’t resist a little photo-geekiness…<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photographing birds as they take off is tricky but with a little luck and perseverance it can be done. Landing shots are much more difficult and often require creative innovation. <\/p>\n![\"black-billed](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/04\/black-billed-magpie-1295c-ron-dudley.jpg\")
1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D, 500 f\/4 II, 1.4 tc,\u00a0twig tip removed, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong> <\/em><\/p>\n