As you know I love BIF shots, but have you ever thought about the fact that there’s a beginning of every BIF shot? It’s the Take Off. These are even more difficult to capture than BIF shots (where the birds are flying by, often for several seconds). It’s hard to predict when a bird will actually take off; it can be sitting there for several minutes before it suddenly takes flight, so you have to have your camera at the ready. Other times you can get lucky – while you are photographing a perched bird it decides to fly off and you (inadvertently) capture its Take Off. Here are three Take Off pictures – you decide if the photographer was being patient or lucky to get the shot.
This is a very interesting picture by anamour36. It shows both a male and female Hooded Merganser as they run across an icy patch of lake as it was snowing. Note that anamour36 used a shutter speed of 1/4000th of a sec. to stop all the action. He also used a wider than usual crop to capture the bit of open water on the right and the snow on the left. GreatBirdPic anamour36!
Bajadreamer took another Take Off shot as a Yellow Oriole left after feeding on a colorful flower. He used a shutter speed of 1/3200th of a sec. to capture this moment. Again, I like how he cropped and positioned this image, leaving lots of space to the left which invites the viewer to imagine where the bird will be flying and includes all of the three flowers on the right. Bajadreamer always writes an interesting description about his photos – be sure to click on the pic to read it.
Here’s another one from anamour36, this time of a Yellow-bellied Sapsucker dropping straight down. It’s such an unusual angle to view a bird, but effective in showing the viewer the bird’s namesake (yellow-belly).
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