G Dan Mitchell Photograph: Tundra Swans, Dawn

Tundra Swans, Dawn

Posted on 21 February 2012

Tundra swans in dawn light above the Central Valley of California.

This is the second photograph of this particular group of tundra swans that flew low over our position near the end of Woodbridge Road in the California Central Valley near the end of January. With all the challenges of photographing flying birds in limited light and with long lenses, it is no wonder that one gets a less than 100% success rate with these photographs. But every so often all the pieces fall into place and you end up with something that is not another slightly out-of-focus, slightly mis-aimed, over- or under-exposed photograph of the silhouettes of bird undersides. Seriously. ;-)

This group came over at a relatively low level, though not so low than individual birds would fill the viewfinder. By default, I usually begin with the camera in “landscape” (horizontal) mode for this sort of subject, but because these birds were almost directly overhead and lined up “vertically” rather than strung out in a line, I decided to quickly shift the camera to “portrait” (vertical) orientation after one initial exposure as they approached. Now the trick was to try to keep my eye on one bird that needed to be under the AF point, while simultaneously remaining aware of the entire flock so that I could keep them within the boundary of the frame and try to catch them at a point when they were not blocking one another. The fact that I got the beautiful morning light coming from below was partially due to being there good and early, and possibly due to the birds thoughtfully positioning themselves to allow this. Thank you, tundra swans!

Text, photographs, and other media are © Copyright G Dan Mitchell (or others when indicated) and are not in the public domain and may not be used on websites, blogs, or in other media without advance permission from G Dan Mitchell.