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