{"id":39839,"date":"2016-05-29T05:32:57","date_gmt":"2016-05-29T11:32:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=39839"},"modified":"2016-05-29T05:55:29","modified_gmt":"2016-05-29T11:55:29","slug":"landing-barn-swallow-are-you-fooled-by-whats-happening-here","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2016\/05\/29\/landing-barn-swallow-are-you-fooled-by-whats-happening-here\/","title":{"rendered":"Landing Barn Swallow – Are You Fooled By What’s Happening Here?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sometimes I have to rely on subtle clues to figure out what’s really<\/em> going on in my own images. And I was there!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"barn<\/p>\n

1\/4000, f\/6.3, ISO 800, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + 1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Ten days ago I photographed a swarm of Barn Swallows as they\u00a0were gathering mud for their nests on Antelope Island. When I was culling those images a few days ago I\u00a0didn’t delete\u00a0this one because I thought it was pretty unusual to catch a\u00a0Barn Swallow\u00a0as it was landing – in fact I don’t remember ever having seen an image of any swallow as it was landing. Other than that I don’t think it’s a great\u00a0photo but closer inspection reveals that one of my assumptions about the image is not correct and I wonder if some of my readers make the same initial mistake.<\/p>\n

So, what do you think is happening or about to happen here?<\/p>\n

My initial impression\u00a0was that the swallow is about to land on the rock below its feet but after closer inspection I’m sure that’s not the case. If the rock were directly below the bird it should be in roughly the same plane as the feet of the swallow and the rock and the\u00a0feet should be equally sharp. But notice that the rock is significantly softer than the feet of the bird. At these focal lengths I have very little depth of field and the\u00a0relative softness of the rock tells me that it’s on the far side of the swallow which is about to land in the water in front of the rock<\/em>.<\/p>\n

My eye was fooled by two things:<\/p>\n