The Takeoff

Gallery: AvianPosted August 5, 201273 views2 comments

Taken on the Kansas River near Topeka, Kansas, USA. several weeks ago.

This Heron was seen approaching my very open position on a sandbar, came in for a landing right in front of me, lighted in too deep water, flapped its wings violently to extricate himself, and then sat lightly down about 20 yards from me. Hello....

I was doing landscape and had a Nikkor 100-300 manual zoom. I tried some of the approach shots but most were slightly blurred. I was able to get a decent focus at 100 mm when the bird landed and snapped away as he looked at me and then took off.

Probably with an automatic lens I would have had a nice sequence to review an work up.

I don't mind the wing blur but some would object.

Critique sought and welcomed.
Nikon d700, Nikkor f/5.6 100-300mm

Comments

2 comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on August 5, 2012 at 3:19 PM

I don't mind the wing blur, either, but I do mind the missed focus on the heron.

Yes, flight shots are a lot easier these days with auto focus lenses, but many of us did ok for a long time with manual focus lenses.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments

Comment posted by John Tobias on August 8, 2012 at 11:41 PM

Nice image, I like the detail in the under wing areas, would like to see more detail in the head, it appears a bit washed out, at least on my monitor. I think you could crop a bit off of the top, about on the water/tree line and see how you like it. Would put more focus on the bird. Thanks for sharing.

Registered on September 12, 2009, 2120 Posts, 6455 Comments