{"id":88724,"date":"2020-08-20T06:21:56","date_gmt":"2020-08-20T12:21:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=88724"},"modified":"2020-08-20T08:48:07","modified_gmt":"2020-08-20T14:48:07","slug":"eastern-kingbird-and-barn-swallow-in-flight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2020\/08\/20\/eastern-kingbird-and-barn-swallow-in-flight\/","title":{"rendered":"Eastern Kingbird And Barn Swallow In Flight"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the past I’ve mentioned a strategy I often use for photographing songbirds in flight but I’ve never explained it. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t. When I used it two days ago my batting average went down but I’ll continue to use it and play the odds.<\/p>\n

For what it’s worth here’s the rationale for my strategy and a couple of examples of when it didn’t<\/em> work. After all, we can learn as much from our failures as we can from our successes.<\/p>\n

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Songbirds are small, erratic and incredibly fast – too fast to follow and keep active focus points on in flight. When I attempt to keep my focus points on them they nearly always lose the bird and focus on the background or something else, resulting in a soft bird.<\/span><\/p>\n

So my strategy is often to focus on them while they’re perched and then take my finger off of the focusing button (I use back button AF) and hope they take off at right angles to me. If they do they’ll be in the same plane in early flight as when they were perched so if I have enough shutter speed my first few shots of them in flight have a good chance of being sharp.<\/span><\/p>\n

Think about it. There’s four basic directions they’re most likely to take off:<\/span><\/p>\n