Trogon Photo Tours

October 2017 - This month's newsleter discusses photographing groups of birds in flight.  In my opinion one of the most challenging subjects in bird photography is photographing groups of birds in flight.  It's often very difficult to get more than 2 birds in flight in focus so this article discusses techniques for doing so as well as other techniques for making compelling images with groups of birds in flight. 

White Ibis photographed March 2017 off Rockport, TX.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/2000 F10, iso 800, handheld, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0 compensation.  This shot illustrates some of the challenges of photographing flocks of birds in flight.  The birds toward the center are pretty sharp but those in the corners are out of focus, in this full frame shot you can see that most clearly with the birds in the lower right hand corner but also those in the top left are not sharp.  In addition there is quite a bit of overlap between birds which is not ideal. This is a common result when photographing a flock of birds in flight, certainly much more common than getting them all in sharp focus with no overlap.

This is a closer crop from the same image of the birds 3rd and 4th from the upper left hand corner, you can see the bird on the right is pretty sharp while the bird on the left is clearly not in good focus despite the fact that I stopped down to F10. 

Black-bellied Whistling Ducks photographed March 2017, Lamar, TX.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1/3200 F11, iso 1250, tripod, blind.  This is a much more successful image as the birds are all pretty sharp and they are spread nicely in the frame with no overlap.  Without the teleconverter on here and shooting at F11, the depth of field is much more than in the previous shot with the White Ibis.  It's 3 stops down from wide open as opposed to almost 2. 

American Avocets photographed May 2017, Galveston, TX.  Canon 1DX II, 500F4 1.4x 1/2000 F9, iso 1000, handheld, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0.  This is one of my favorites that I have taken of groups of birds in flight, I had always wanted to get a shot of a flock of avocets banking topside in flight like this and was able to make this image this spring in Galveston.  I was shooting birds on the ground at F6.3, saw this flock coming in, quickly flipped it to F9 and fired off a round of shots.  While exposures are often more consistent shooting in manual mode, I wouldn't have had time to make an adjustment to more than 1 setting and get this shot, this is a lot of the reason I shoot in aperture priority the majority of the time. These birds were quite a bit farther away than the ibis and ducks so I needed less depth of field. 

Snow Geese photographed at Bosque de Apache NWR, New Mexico, February 2009.  Canon 1DMK3 500F4 1/5000 F8, iso 800, handheld.  This is a different take on flock photography.  In this shot only the one bird is in the plane of field and the rest are far in the background.  I like it in that the subject is nice, sharp and isolated but the birds in the background give a feel for the flocking nature of the species. 

Snow Geese photographed November 2009 at Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico.  Canon 1DMk3, 500F4 1/200 F5, iso 640.  This was taken at a much slower shutter speed, just after dawn.  If I zoom in the birds are not very sharp in this image but it is not very important as they are silhouetted and the nice sky colors and mood are what makes the image successful.  There is some overlap in some of the front birds which isn't ideal but for the most part the birds are separated.  Because of the silhouette the fact that they aren't sharp isn't really apparent so it doesn't hurt the image the way it would if they were fronlit against a blue sky. 

Snow Geese photographed November 2009 at Bosque del Apache NWR, New Mexico.  Canon 1DMk3, 500F4 1/25 F4.5, iso 100, handheld panning.  Another technique for photographing groups of birds in flight is to slow the shutter speed way down and show the motion of the birds.  For this shot I dropped the iso all the way down to 100.  The heads turned out just sharp enough and the wings show the motion of the flight.  The sunset colors add a lot as well.  Even if I had shot this at iso 800 and 1/200 of a second it would have been difficult to get the wings sharp so part of what I was doing here was working with the situation presented to me instead of fighting it. 

Scarlet Ibis photographed February 2014 at Caroni Swamp, Trinidad.  Canon 5DMk3 500F4 1/13 F6.3, iso 400, handheld panning.   Here I dropped the shutter speed down even lower and there is nothing sharp in the image but the colors, sense of movement, birds spread out without overlapping and background make it a sucessful shot.  Even in good lighting due to depth of field constraints it would be difficult to get all the birds in focus, by shooting at a very low shutter speed you are taking that variable out and can still produce an artistic shot.  In this case the lighting was low anyway so it was by far the easiest way to make a successful shot.  

In these examples I have worked from a high shutter speed with the goal of getting all of the birds sharp to a very low shutter speed where I was not worried about getting any of them sharp.  When using either of these methods, your percentage of really good shots will be low as with a fast shutter speed and wide depth of field it's still difficult to make a successful shot with a group of birds in flight.  At a low shutter speed, it's difficult for all of the elements to come together to make a pleasing blur with a good background, no overlap etc. But the rewards are worth it when you are able to make a nice image of a flying flock of birds.