Monday, September 27, 2010

Duck Shooting Again

The weather today proved to be absolutely outstanding again, the ducks were out (loud and clear too) in force, so what a great opportunity to try a spot of duck photography with my 7D. Indeed, bird photography was the thing that got me hooked with taking photos of stuff, and, in lieu of a long telephoto + sporadically available subjects, duck shooting has been my main target in this area so far due to their size and ready availability.

So, armed with camera in hand, and having scoped out some clusters all morning without a camera around (I missed an interesting clash between a bossy magpie and a group of ducks, with two of the ducks being frightened off, but the last one holding its ground and quacking loudly until the magpie left).

Without further ado, let the pictures speak for themselves.

From Spring Ducks 2010
This is one of my favourite shots of the day. There are few more of these ducklings inside...



Some "easy warmups":
From Spring Ducks 2010

From Spring Ducks 2010

From Spring Ducks 2010

My first "bird in flight" shot EVER:
From Spring Ducks 2010
... but I think the following was really more impressive...
From Spring Ducks 2010
... which was followed not to long afterwards by ...
From Spring Ducks 2010

All of a sudden...
From Spring Ducks 2010
came charging out from a cluster of bushes, and...
From Spring Ducks 2010
"Wait for me!", a few moments later (you can see the next few photos... *ahem*)

Finally, we shall finish where we started off; with some more cuteness :)
From Spring Ducks 2010
From Spring Ducks 2010
From Spring Ducks 2010



Doing this stuff with proper gear instead of crappy point shoots is just so much easier, more fun, and let's you get the shots you had in mind. The 7D's autofocus system did a great job on these subjects (I had it on AI-Servo for most of these shots, as from prior experience, I found that the ducks tended to move quite fast, especially when quite close up), and had a keeper rate of about 90% from the set I took. Unlike in the past, I had so many more useful and interesting shots from this set, that instead of spending my time trying to salve "almost there" shots, I was left struggling to choose which ones I thought looked better. Haha!

1 comment:

  1. Great photos! :D Love the second one, they seem like alien pods or something haha.

    Cheers!

    ReplyDelete