Sometimes when we’re out with our cameras we have a bit of luck and nature cooperates. So it was today when I was out attempting to capture some images of terns hovering.

NOTE: Click on images to enlarge.

I was in a good position with the sun at my back and I was expecting the terns to be facing me as they hovered over their target fish.

Quite unexpectedly a tern came in much closer to the bridge than I anticipated which gave me more of a side perspective, creating some nice lighting on the bird.

I quickly captured the bird in my viewfinder and was able to fill the 40 image buffer on my Nikon 1 V2 with a long AF-C run at 15fps.

I clipped the wings on a number of images but was able to get tern in a good position in my frame for a good number of images.

As luck would have it, that single, long AF-C burst was the only opportunity I had during the entire outing where the tern was in that specific position relative to the bridge. Sometimes you just ‘count your lucky stars’ and look forward to opening your files up once you get home.

I inadvertently must have nudged my shutter setting while shooting in Manual mode which caused me to underexpose the images. As I started working with the images in post I found I actually liked how the underexposure impacted the dramatic lighting. Another bit of luck I suppose.

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