One of my favorite activities in photography is shooting birds in flight, or trying to.
In several wetland areas in Northeast Wisconsin, we get an annual gathering of Short Eared Owls in late fall and winter. Luckily, they regularly take flight in search of prey and sometimes can provide an arcade-type experience for photographers. This usually occurs at sunset but sometimes they take off with some daylight still available and it is just a blast trying to capture the aerobatics.
But the adrenaline really surges when one of the birds turns and flies directly toward you. Even more so at close proximity as was the case with this photo.
As this short-ear approached, just keeping it in frame was a challenge. Using an older DSLR (Canon 70D), I’ve learned that focusing on birds coming toward me isn’t going to happen automatically and I needed to keep triggering the shutter, hoping that my timing would be good enough to get a sharp frame or two. (And also hoping my exposure settings were close!)
I was lucky to get several nice captures and one very sharp image. A bonus was that the bird was almost at the horizon level so the golden grasses in the autumn evening light transitioned into the baby blue sky above. This turned out to be one of very few of my photos I’ve ever thought print-worthy.
This was taken on a Canon 70D with an EF600mm lens at f4.0, 1/1600th, ISO 100