Trogon Photo Tours

December 2020 - It seems like this year, including just the last couple of days I ended up photographing many flocks of shorebirds down in the Galveston area.  So I thought that it would be a fitting topic for our final article for 2020.  It includes images taken both on the Texas and Washington coasts.

Here's a group of Sanderlings photographed this May in Galveston, Texas.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4, 100-400 with 1.4x teleconverter at 560mm, 1/2500 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  Note that I am both stopping down a fair bit to try and get a lot of birds in focus and at the same time keeping my shutter speed high as the birds are flying.  I find that top side images tend to work best with large groups of shorebirds in flight.   

Here's another group of Sanderlings photographed this May in Galveston, Texas.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4, 100-400 at 348mm, 1/2000 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  I find that I often end up cropping these types of flight shots into pano compositions to isolate the birds against a uniform background. 

Here are the same group of Sanderlings as the previous shot just three frames later as they landed on the beach.  Again a pano crop but including the beach as they were landing.

There were large numbers of Black Terns migrating in Galveston this May with the more common resident terns of the area Least, Sandwich and Royal.  In this image its all Least and Black Terns.  The settings for this shot were Canon 5D4 100-400 at 338mm, 1/3200 F11, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  For this shot I zoomed out to try and get a lot of the birds into the frame and increase my depth of field to get more in focus.  This shot worked out well in that almost all of the birds are separated from each other, photographing flocks of birds like this that is somewhat of a rarity, the vast majority of the time you end up with birds overlapping each other which tends to make the image less appealing overall. 

Here's one of my favorite shorebird flock shots.  I photographed these banking avocets in May 2017 at Galveston.  The settings for this shot which is a full frame image are Canon 1DX2, 500F4 1.4x 1/2000 F9, iso 1000, Av mode at 0, evaluative metering, handheld.  This shot was a top 100 shot in the annual Audubon Photo Contest a couple of years ago.  

This is a shot from quite some time ago in the Corpus Christi area.  The techs for this one are Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/1600 F11, iso 640, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  One fun thing about photographing groups of birds on the shoreline is you are often able to photograph more than one species at once.  For this shot I cropped quite a bit from the right, the Willet on far right of the frame was where I had the AF point.  I was trying to stop down enough to get all of the shorebirds in focus, which I didn't quite achieve with the middle Black-bellied Plover but the Black Skimmer was a happy accident as it flew through the frame and I had enough depth of field that it was also relatively sharp. 

Another way to photograph groups of waterbirds is to shoot at a low shutter speed in order to show the motion of the birds.  This is a shot of a bait ball taken in the Strait of Juan de Fuca in Washington. Harbor Seals and likely Salmon are driving small fish up to the surface and Heermann's and Glaucous-winged Gulls, Pelagic Cormorants and Rhinoceros Auklets are feeding on them from the top.  The techs for this shot were Canon 5D3, Sigma 150-600 at 388mm, 1/80 F20, iso 100, handheld from boat.  To achieve these results and show the motion I dropped the shutter speed by reducing the iso to 100 and stopping down a lot, also this helps to try and get more birds in some focus.  The ones swimming and not moving a lot can still be relatively sharp while the ones flying will show the motion.  I thought this was a good way to portray the activity of the bait ball.

This shot of a flock of Marbled Godwits was taken many years ago at Tokeland on the Washington coast.  I have included it in a few articles as it's probably my best example of a flock of shorebirds shot at a low shutter speed where some are sharp but the motion of the birds taking off is shown.  It's done well in photo contests and when I sold prints it sold the best of my photos.  The settings for this shot were 20D, 500F4 1/125 F16, iso 400, Av mode evaluative metering at 0, 580ex fill flash at -2.0, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  To execute a shot like this where some of the birds are sharp and the movement (blue) is shown in the moving birds it's important to be on a tripod with the head locked down.  That way even though you are at a low shutter speed the birds which are not moving should be sharp if they are in the focus plane. 

Here's a group of Black Skimmers photographed at the Rockport Beach Park in Texas.  For shots with large groups of birds on the beach I will usually focus on the bird closest to me as if it's out of focus it tends to ruin the shot, whereas the birds out of focus in the background are less of a distraction.  For this shot the middle Skimmer obliged and posed nicely with its beak open for me.  The techs for this shot were Canon 7D 500F4 1/60 F18, iso 100, Av mode, evaluative metering +0.3, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head.  The reason for the low iso and shutter speed was I hoping to get something similar to the above Godwits shot with some birds in focus and some out of focus if birds were taking off or landing.  If I had been just trying to get all of the birds sharp I would have bumped up my iso with this camera to 400 and gotten a faster shutter speed.  But since I was locked down on the tripod the shot worked out at this low shutter speed and iso anyway.     

This is another one from Tokeland on the Washington coast.  When I saw this Whimbrel amongst a flock of Marbled Godwits I knew it would make an interesting image.  So rather than focus on the front or middle birds I made sure to place my autofocus point directly on the Whimbrel.  I still wanted the Godwits to be recognizable so again I stopped down quite a bit.  The techs for the shot were Canon 1D3 500F4 1.4x 1/125 F22, iso 400, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo Tripod, Wimberley Head locked down.  

Photographing flocks of shorebirds is both challenging and fun.  Generally you are going to stop down a fair bit to get more birds in focus.  If you want all of the birds sharp go with a fast shutter speed, while if you want to show the motion of at least some of the birds drop your iso and shutter speed down.