One of the things I discovered about beach panning is that the plane of focus is so narrow that things that are between the lens and the subject are often rendered almost like giant bokeh. This can be distracting and/or disastrous. I have more than one shot where a small bird scurried in front of my subject just as I pressed the shutter release, becoming a huge whitish blob that spoils the shot. Sometimes, the bird which passes between the lens and the subject grabs the auto focus away from the intended subject and the entire shot is out of focus. I lucked out with this shot. The sanderling on the left had scurried past the dunlin and I maintained focus on my original subject, the dunlin. I was a bit further from my subject than would have been ideal so my subject isn’t isolated but I think it illustrates life on the beach and all of the activity surrounding these little shore birds.
I like that slot of focus between the other birds, it does tell a good nature story of crowding & competition.
Pretty cool! Such a narrow slice of focus- this shot really illustrates how precise you have to be when focusing and how you can isolate just one in a crowd. Really neat technique!