BIF or Lunch

[Loupey]

A quick stop at a nearby pond will tell me whether I'm having lunch or shooting through my lunch.

Found these swallows today doing what they do.


Trust me, there wasn't much else going on. Would have had lunch

[ksbryan0]

Those are great, Loupey. I obviously need a lot more BIF practice...last time I tried swallows in flight, I think I was a half mile behind them!

[DennisT]

Loupey I have been trying to get a reasonable swallow in flight since as far back as I can remember but, alas, without success - so please help here - how did you get these? They are always either too far or too fast or both, even over water when they sometimes drop to stall speed to feed off rising nymphs etc. Very frustrating to see the excellent results you have here (LOL)

[armando_m]

the last photo is fantastic !

[CaraRose]

I hate you, Loupey :P. I can't get a good BIF of a swallow if my life depended on it.

Spectacular shots!

Is #2 a rough winged?

[Loupey]

Ken - thanks for looking!

Loupey I have been trying to get a reasonable swallow in flight since as far back as I can remember but, alas, without success - so please help here - how did you get these? They are always either too far or too fast or both, even over water when they sometimes drop to stall speed to feed off rising nymphs etc. Very frustrating to see the excellent results you have here (LOL)

Dennis, I touched briefly on the focusing/exposure techniques in Bob's thread here:

BIF practice and a few questions

Couple other pointers:

1) Be aware of the wind direction and sun position. Winds out the east means shoot in the morning and winds out of the west means shoot in the afternoon/evening. Wait for the birds to turn into the wind before shooting - they will be at their slowest flight speed in relation to you.

2) In a wheeling flock of swallows, you have to be able to pick one out from the rest and follow it in to your shooting envelope. You will learn to read what the bird is going to do by how it is flying.

3) Shooting on a monopod is probably the easiest. If you'd rather use a tripod, keep all the locking levers loose and just use it for support (and not for stability).

[Loupey]

Armando & Cara - thank you both.

Cara, yes that is a northern rough-winged. There were only a couple among the tree swallows. No barn swallows at this time here.

[Loupey]

BTW, I was really fortunate with that last image. In focusing manually, I typically only get one shot out of an entire fly-by sequence to be in focus. In this particular sequence, I was able to follow it in to get 4 consecutive shots (OK, more like 3 1/2 ).

Here is the entire 4 shot sequence (still haven't normalized the post processing so that all 4 actually look like they came from the same sequence). Cropped heavily and with exif data intact.

[almo]

Loupey, you are the man!

[paulnj]

Great Images!!!!!!!!!!!!!!