This article discusses how to make photographing swallows in flight easy through the use of technique and technology. Earlier this week I went out to the Biggar Lagoon Wetlands for about three hours with the intention to photograph swallows in flight. Suffice to say I had a very productive morning. After doing a quick cull through my resulting images I ended up with almost 900 useable images that I would realistically consider processing in post.
Category Archives: Birds in Flight
Avian Musical Chairs
This article, Avian Musical Chairs, shares 15 consecutive images of two swallows trading places around a nesting box. The photographs were captured handheld at Biggar Lagoon Wetlands in Grimsby Ontario using Pro Capture H with an OM-D E-M1X.
Warbler in Flight
This articles features a selection of photographs of a warbler in flight captured handheld at Hendrie Valley. The posting also discusses the technique used. All of the images have been severely cropped which is understandable given the size of the warblers and my shooting distance from them. Warblers are about 10-18 cm (~4 to 7 inches) in length. In terms of shooting distance I was about 9 to 23 metres (~30 to 75 feet) away from the birds. The severity of the crops has affected image quality.
Pigeons In Flight
This article shares some new images of pigeons in flight, captured handheld at the Burlington Bay lift bridge. I’ve made a few attempts to photograph pigeons in flight at this location in the past with only a modest degree of success.
Leveraging Technology
New generation cameras can broaden our photographic potential, but unless we are adept at leveraging technology our potential stagnates. This article discusses the link between technology and our need to develop both physically and mentally.
Swallow Pairs in Flight
This article shares a selection of 22 images of swallow pairs in-flight, captured handheld during a practice session at Windemere Basin Park in Hamilton Ontario. Some of these photographs appear to be of mated pairs, while other images captured some aggressive interactions between the birds.
All of these photographs were severely cropped as the birds were not as close as I would have liked. I’m still trying to hone my eye/hand coordination with these pocket rockets. More practice is required before I’ll be able to get more pixels on subject birds in free flight.
Swallow Mid-Air Interactions
This article shares some images of swallow mid-air interactions that were captured during an extended swallow in-flight practice session. As noted in a recent article, my swallow eye/hand coordination was in desperate need of practice. So I recently spent over 4 hours at Windemere Basin Park photographing swallows in free flight using Bird Detection AI Subject Tracking with my E-M1X.
First Swallow Images of 2022
This article shares my first swallow images of 2022, all of which were captured handheld at Windemere Basin Park in Hamilton Ontario. It was a very blustery afternoon with wind gusts of about 70 kilometres per hour which made photographing swallows in free flight even more challenging.
I quickly came to realize that my handheld skills with this particular species were in definite need of some serious practice. So, I focused my photographic efforts with the use of Pro Capture H for all of the images in this posting. These photographs were all captured in about 90 minutes.
Pro Capture H Surface Action
This article shares a selection of handheld photographs of birds-in-flight surface action captured using Pro Capture H.
BIF Fast Response Practice
This article discusses a BIF fast response practice exercise that I do on a periodic basis as well as sharing some recent images captured during one of these practice sessions.