I still need lots of work on my panning technique but I did have a few successful results from my trip to photograph the Texas Spring Migration last week. At the High Island Rookery, I took this sequence of six shots of a flying roseate spoonbill in a three second burst with my Nikon D800. After seeing these shots, I don’t plan to defect to Canon any time soon.
Melinda, Lonnie, and I ventured out to Lynx Lake near Prescott to spend Sunday afternoon seeing what we could see. Melinda and I were anxious to try out recommendations from Moose about the best way to keep focus on birds in flight using Auto Area Focus and all 51 focus points. I haven’t yet mastered using this setting but I had only a couple of chances to try it out because there weren’t many opportunities to capture birds in flight as there were few birds flying on this bright afternoon. We tried photographing shovelers and mallards that were paddling on the lake with a bit more success but the ripples in the water seemed to distract the auto focus system and kept it from tracking on the birds. As Moose has suggested to me, the answer to my poorly focused flight photos is to practice, practice, practice my panning technique.
We came across a dead tree filled with sunning double-crested cormorants. Their turquoise eyes are startling and seem almost surreal.
