Sometimes we can get so caught up in the act of photographing subject birds that we forget that our images can tell a story. This short article features a small selection of photographs that (hopefully) illustrate that images can tell a story… even with common birds like gulls.
NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.
Last week I was out for a few hours testing the combination of Pro Capture L with Bird Detection AI to see how well these two technologies would work together. Most of my image runs we intended to photograph birds-in-flight with interesting wing positions.
As a result I timed many of my image runs to capture birds banking while in flight, coming in to land, or other mid-air behaviours. Determining the intent of our image run in advance is critical, especially if our cameras have fairly small image buffers.
While the wing positions of the gull in the above photograph is similar to the first two image in this article, you’ll notice an important difference. It has something in its beak. Whenever we notice that a bird is carrying something… it is often prudent to let the bird fly a bit more before executing our image run. Our images could tell a story about fighting over food. Nesting behaviour. Perhaps a courtship display or other bird behaviour.
In the next 7 consecutive images you’ll see some specific interaction between two gulls. Perhaps they are already a mated couple… or the offer of food could be a courtship display by the male gull. The birds in this image run were about 66 to 68 metres away.
A general rule of thumb when you see a bird flying with something in its mouth… be careful with your buffer as something interesting may be about to occur!
Technical Note
Photographs were captured hand-held using camera gear as noted in the EXIF data. Images were produced from RAW files using my standard process. Crops are noted for each photograph.
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