While walking in Oatley Park with my husband I noticed a Sacred Kingfisher dart into a small hole tunnelled into a termite nest, in the fork of a tree, about 7 metres above the ground.
We worked out we could set up with a camera on a clifftop nearby, almost directly opposite the entrance.
Over the next few days we took many photos of it bringing spiders, lizards. cicadas,various bugs and a great many mudcrabs to the nest. Mostly we tried to get shots of it in flight.
To answer the old question about colour, we found that the same bird photographed in the shade without flash, shows as blue while with sunlight and flash shows as green.
Cheers,
Antonia
They are such beautiful shots. Well done.
I love kingfishers.
Cheers
Tim
Brisbane
Thank you Tim.
We were very fortunate to be able to get a position level with the nest.
Also we thought it was an opportunity to take photos of it in flight as these seem to be fairly rare.
It turned out to be like photographing a bullet coming out of a gun(!)
The bird only came to the nest about once every 20 minutes was just a blur of colour. Even though we had pre-focused, it would come at a slightly different angle each time and the nest was in deep shade. Even using 3 flash-heads and 1/ 500th second we only ended up with about 20 usable shots out of quite a few hundreds. (Of course there are many more of it sitting on branches in the distance)
It surprised us how much of the diet was mudcrabs...at least 50 %....you can see the mud right up its beak in some of the shots.
If you like , I can have a look for some more images to upload.
Cheers,
Antonia
Gorgeous colours and I love the one with the spider
I have looked at some of your photos, particularly the Whistling Kite, and feel quite humbled the quality of your photos. Can't work out how you can achieve such perfect focus on such a fast moving target.
I had to get a better camera so I had a chance of tracking them. It's a Canon 7D. I usually use 400 iso so I can have a very high shutter speed (2000+). And I have to react quickly. You have no idea how many I've missed!
They are lovely shots, but I have to say it is a shame about the logo on them
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Agreed about the logo. Seriously, why would you bother?
- soakes
soakes
Olinda, Victoria, Australia
Soakes.... maybe because you have a photography business that you are trying to promote? ...... in which case this is definitely the wrong place
Sunshine Coast Queensland
Hi Antonia
High-speed flash photography will freeze the images perfectly.
If I may suggest a good way to freeze the shot is to use manual mode, set a very small aperture to make sure you don't let ambient light interfere and allow the flash to provide light output. You may have to use a very low ISO, such as 100 even to get the exposure and freeze movement. Try taking a shot without flash and if it is black or just about pure black then you are on the right path. If you can use an infrared trigger then it's even better. As you are partly doing the best thing by manually focusing so leave that bit as is. You can set the three flash heads so two illuminate the area of the entrance where the bird's about to land and a third one to illuminate the background. This way you should be able to achieve something pretty awesome sooner or later.
If you have any other questions, feel free to ask. :-) Good luck!