Getting the shot.
My passion is shooting wildlife and as such much thought goes into taking a shot. I set the camera up for possible shots before I even start walking away from my vehicle--just in case some opportunity should appear.

So here is the shot history. Water creates a glare issue and putting a polarizing filter on a Nikon 200-400 VR lens is not a good option. Thus I waited for an overcast day. I hiked out into the Florida Everglades and located a nesting pair of Great Blue Herons. Then I hiked around the marsh to get the right sunlight direction for the flight of the herons as they built their nest. Because the sky was a dull grey I had to adjust my angle of view to keep the sky out of the photo. Next came the issue of background and subject. I needed to get subject separation from the background. This required a low f-stop setting. I chose f5.6 (the lens would have allowed f4 but the heron is a big bird with wide wings and i wanted sharp focus on the wings. 5.6 gave me a bit more DOF but still allowed for blurring the background. I spent a great deal of time working for the best background possible. I did not want to shoot at the extreme focal length of the lens (400mm) because by shooting at 300-320 mm I would get a greater blur on the background which was the major concern. This required moving me to get into the optimum position. I set the camera on aperture (I always shoot wildlife in aperture mode because it gives me control of the background (DOF) I'll let the camera adjust the shutter. I prefer to shoot at the bottom of the ISO range (200 on my Nikon D300) but due to the light and the speed of the subject I had to raise the ISO to 400. Shutter speed ended up between 1/2000 and 1/2499 for the burst of seven shots. I needed at least 1/1500 to freeze those wing tips.

The camera was set on continuous focus tracking and on spot metering. I used 9 focus points instead of the 54 to help with tracking focus. I used good panning technique (proper elbow and foot positioning) as well as follow through. (all of which I practice in my driveway following bouncing tennis balls) For the flight photos the camera was hand held. It took nearly 90 minutes to allow the bird to make 4 trips to collect sticks. I got about 7 shots on each return trip firing in high continuous mode but waiting for the bird to fill the frame before beginning the burst. Out ofthe 30 plus frames I "kept" 5 frames discarding the others for such issues as framing (lost a few wing tips), twig position, (blocking the eye) or wing position. Over all, I consider this a good flight photo, not a great one. This is a full frame shot with only a tiny bit of cropping to straighten the water line.

Thanks for looking. Feel free to critique the photo or the technique.

Larry

I recommend single point focus and single point metering on his eye, if at all possible. If you have his eye in focus the rest will take care of itself. You'll need to move your body to follow him as you keep the single point focus indicator of your camera trained on his eye. It takes practice. I used to practice on the turkey vultures that would come and go near my workplace. I've been trying to post some of my pics but it just won't work. Grrrrr. I've had this problem before. Oh, I think I was told to log out and log back in. I'll try that.