{"id":59140,"date":"2018-05-10T05:31:28","date_gmt":"2018-05-10T11:31:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=59140"},"modified":"2018-05-10T08:32:47","modified_gmt":"2018-05-10T14:32:47","slug":"a-strategy-for-photographing-cliff-swallows-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/10\/a-strategy-for-photographing-cliff-swallows-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"A Strategy For Photographing Cliff Swallows In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><em>Occasionally I post an older image that most current blog followers have never seen. This one was published on March 2, 2013. The text is new and I&#8217;ve reprocessed the photo.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Most bird photographers who try to photograph swallows in flight give up in frustration and\u00a0I tried for several years before\u00a0doing exactly that. They&#8217;re just too darned fast and erratic in the air. But in the spring and early summer\u00a0we have so<em> many<\/em> of them around here and they always seemed to be taunting me as they flew by, often very close, as if to say &#8220;na na na na na na &#8211; can&#8217;t get me in flight, can you.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>That wore on me so eventually I took up the challenge again but this time I tried to analyze what I was doing wrong and come up with a more effective strategy. In the past my two main problems were keeping them in frame long enough to lock focus on them and getting light on their undersides. My new\u00a0plan had two components that I hoped would (at least partially)\u00a0address those issues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Photographing them soon after sunrise. With the sun very low in the sky it should be much easier to get light on their ventral surfaces in flight.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Shooting them as they hovered near the nests they were building. As they hovered, mostly in place, it should be a little\u00a0easier\u00a0to keep them in frame long enough to lock focus and take a shot or two.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>As always my primary concern was to avoid disturbing them near their nests so I chose birds nesting\u00a0next to\u00a0a parking lot where they were acclimated to vehicles and people and I shot from inside my pickup. The swallows carried on as if I wasn&#8217;t there and to\u00a0a very\u00a0satisfactory\u00a0degree my strategy for getting better photos worked.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"59142\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/10\/a-strategy-for-photographing-cliff-swallows-in-flight\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley\/\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley.jpg\" data-orig-size=\"900,687\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;RON DUDLEY&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;1&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"cliff-swallow-9981b ron dudley\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley.jpg\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-59142 size-full\" title=\"cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley\" src=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"900\" height=\"687\" srcset=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley.jpg 900w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley-300x229.jpg 300w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley-768x586.jpg 768w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley-150x115.jpg 150w, https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley-400x305.jpg 400w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 900px) 100vw, 900px\" \/><em>1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 800,\u00a0Canon 7D, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n<p>I was able to get several\u00a0keepers of Cliff Swallows in flight and this one was my favorite of the bunch. I like the light on the underside, wing position, catch light in the eye, head turn with open beak, the toes peeking out from the lower belly feathers\u00a0and the nest-building mud on the bill. The head,\u00a0body and tail\u00a0are sharp and there&#8217;s even\u00a0reasonably\u00a0good light on\u00a0that dark, photon-sucking\u00a0face.<\/p>\n<p>It\u00a0felt so very\u00a0good to lay out a plan,\u00a0follow it precisely, and have it actually\u00a0work in a\u00a0difficult situation. I&#8217;m not saying it was easy, it wasn&#8217;t &#8211; but it was now within the realm of reasonable possibility. I took about 600 shots that morning to get 3 or 4 that I thought were good enough to keep but they were\u00a0my first decent swallow flight shots after several years of trying.<\/p>\n<p>The feeling of accomplishment was satisfying back then and it still is today. But I sure used to\u00a0waste a lot of time,\u00a0effort and pixels\u00a0flailing at the wind before I changed strategies&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>Ron<\/p>\n<p><em>Note: I strongly encourage any readers who may try this strategy with nest-building swallows to:<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Use long focal lengths so you don&#8217;t have to be close to the birds and the nests.<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Shoot from your vehicle if possible (birds tend to be more fearful of people on foot than they are of vehicles).<\/em><\/li>\n<li><em>Watch carefully for any change in behavior indicating that your presence is disturbing the birds. If it is, move further away or leave the area altogether.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Most bird photographers who try to photograph swallows in flight give up in frustration and I tried for several years before doing exactly that. They&#8217;re just too darned fast and erratic in the air.<\/p>\n<p> <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/05\/10\/a-strategy-for-photographing-cliff-swallows-in-flight\/\"><span>Continue reading<\/span><i class=\"crycon-right-dir\"><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,334,1714,16,391],"tags":[1940,542,146,3366,544,311],"class_list":["post-59140","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-cliff-swallows","category-photography-ethics","category-nesting-and-mating","tag-bird-photography-technique","tag-cliff-swallow","tag-flight","tag-nest-photography-ethics","tag-petrochelidon-pyrrhonota","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/05\/cliff-swallow-9981b-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-fnS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59140","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59140"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59140\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59140"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59140"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59140"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}