Birds of prey photography workshop, 4-7-2015

[andygolfer]

I went on a photography workshop (courtesy of a voucher from the children for my birthday) to the English School of Falconry near Old Warden (it used to be AT Old Warden but has moved. The day was spent photographing birds of prey both static and flying and I picked up a few useful tips which might even help my aircraft photography as well.

here are a 'few' of my photos, hope they are of interest.....

4535 tawny owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

4589 bengal eagle owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

4755 bald eagle by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5081 barn owl chicks by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5190 vermiculated eagle owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5336 by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5410 peregrine x lanner cross falcon by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5522 barn owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5684 barn owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

5934 by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

6106 malaysian wood owl by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

6621 Chilean blue eagle by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

6680 Chilean blue eagle by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

6915 white tailed eagle by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

7132 little owl chick by Andrew Goldsmith, on Flickr

there are lots more in my FlickR album for the workshop: https://www.flickr.com/photos/125470545 ... 3377554014

C&C welcome and thanks for looking

Andy

[Nighthawke]

Looks like you had a fun day - plenty of breeds and poses too. Gotta love those chicks though!

[mach one]

our feathered friends do make an interesting change to the normal flying machines that we snap away at

some very interesting subjects and some nice results but it is very to catch the perfect shot of the birds in flight, I did a bird of prey workshop back in 2006 and the place that we went to in mid wales got us to lie down and then they flew a great grey owl to the handler right behind us, it was brilliant and i got some good flying shots but didn't really nail the sharpness of the birds in flight

I was surfing the net just the other night looking for another bird of prey workshop that i could book up for later this year

[andygolfer]

I did my workshop via goingdigital http://www.goingdigital.co.uk/ and it was their south Midlands branch that ran it.

I was taking pics at up to 1/4000th to try to get them really sharp, I was surprised what he told us about the speed required, even a sitting bird tends to be moving and twitching constantly.
The other main learning points that I benefitted from were using AV instead of TV and controlling the speed via ISO - works well once you get the hang of it and also using the histogram, something which I had more or less ignored until then, I have now found a new function to play with on my 70D, the highlight alert which can help you to stop the bleached out areas - that was very useful for the dark birds with white heads but was tricky to get perfect. All in all a handy day and a few tips that should also help with my aviation photography

Andy

[mach one]

all the stuff that we did was on a tripod for the static birds at a fast shutter speed and the flying stuff was as fast as you could get in the available light, I often shoot aperture priority or AV as canon call it

I think a lot of the sharpness thing is the camera not quite nailing the focusing and i think canon are really bad for it, the other day i was shooting with a 50D and a 70-200 2.8 lens and still many shots were immediately deleted as i wasn't happy with the focusing on them

I was discussing the other day with paul that for the price we pay for our canon camera gear the pairing of body and lens can be shockingly bad, when i bought my 7D and mounted my 100-400 to it i was really disappointed with the results and in the end i sent the body and the lens to canon boreham wood to be paired and properly calibrated only then were the results acceptable but you still get a lot of shots where the camera gets the auto focus slightly off

[TheMightyOz]

Lovely photos Andy. It's a shame they moved away from Old Warden. I always used to go into their noon bird flying display before the Shuttleworth aircraft flying display started at 2pm. It made for a nice bit of variety, especially when going with friends who aren't quite as obsessed with aircraft.