I spent all day yesterday in Pleasanton at the Caledonian Club’s annual Scottish Gathering and Games because the California Foundation for Birds of Prey always participates with three exciting shows daily featuring live birds of prey and flight demonstrations. I tried to capture flying birds of prey this year, both still shots and video and for the most part, I failed miserably. Everything I know about photography seemed to have left my feeble brain and I discovered, well after the fact, that my camera settings were completely inappropriate for stop action shots. While I twiddled and fiddled with manual settings yesterday, I now realize that under some circumstances, I need to adjust my mindset and change from manual settings to programmed settings, especially when I don’t have time to really think about them. In yesterday’s case, shutter priority would have been the correct setting and I would have had clear flight shots.
I did take a few decent shots yesterday and this one struck me as fascinating…these two really are birds of a feather. This is Shadow, a gyrfalcon, and Jeff, some sort of scarlet macaw/homo sapiens hybrid.
Your descriptions are always great : )!