Blue Tits in Flight

I consciously started a new photography project from my living room earlier this year, on account of not being able to get out and about much due to some health stuff. My mission; to capture the small garden birds that come and go outside my window, IN FLIGHT...

It's definitely got a few challenges, not least of all the lack of light available when you need to go to around 1/8000 shutter speed to properly freeze the action.

Then there's the focal plane issue. Getting tiny garden birds in focus when they're moving really fast is difficult, as only a tiny slither of 3D space can be in focus at once.

Luckily they're creatures of habit, so you quickly learn from observation that they tend to choose the same branches and trajectories a lot of the time during their routines. That way you can choose a focus point in advance of them (hopefully) being there!

Even then though, I’ve found only around 1 in 50 shots, if that, is useable and requires an awful lot of rescuing in the edit due to all the noise. What I need is a massive light. But I think my neighbours would hate that.

The Benefits of Working From Home: Part II

In what might become a regular feature of this blog (- returning readers may recall the very first post advocating the unexpected quirks of working from home), I've continued to have fun watching the wildlife out of the little window to my left as I perform my photography post-processing duties.

It's been fascinating watching the blue tits using the feeder and rearing their young. Over the weeks across spring and summer I've seen the offspring going from being fairly dependent on their parents,  all fluffy and uncoordinated, being brought and fed the seed, to developing a full plumage, mastering the art of flight and learning how to pick, sort and break into the seed for themselves.

I’ve also witnessed a fairly lucky slug managing to avoid becoming the lunch of an oblivious blue tit. I can confirm they did drop down safely to the ground without being eaten, shortly after the final photo in that sequence.

All garden bird photos were taken on the Fuji X-H1 with the Fujifilm XF50 - 140mm f/2.8 Lens, processed from RAW with Capture One.

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