Photographing the Birds of Bosque:

Flight Photography at Bosque

Bosque is one of the premier locations for practicing your photography of birds in flight. Geese and cranes constantly fill the sky. For the best photos, you want to be in the right places at the right times. And you want to keep in mind these tips for optimum flight shooting:

• When the sun and the wind are from the same direction, think flight photography. Birds almost invariably take off and land into the wind. With the sun and the wind at your back, the birds will be facing you and frontlit, and in strong headwinds their ground speed will be slowed considerably – sometimes they will hang there for your camera.

• If the sun and wind are at right angles, look for birds flying into the wind across your field of view with the sun behind you. The wind will slow them and you can pan, either with a comfortable handheld lens or with a big telephoto. For the latter, I like the Wimberley full size tripod head, which effortlessly balances heavy lenses and allows smooth panning; a high quality video fluid head also works well here. If the birds are heading to their destination with a strong tailwind, they will zip by you in fast-forward and flight shooting is much harder.

• For birds flying by you, there are three "zones": the bird approaches; for a moment it’s directly in front of you; and then it moves away. These can be encapsulated as "facing," "profile," and "butt." I often get caught up in the action and shoot across all three zones, but back at the light table, the butt shots inevitably get the can.

• Flight shooting is usually easiest when the sun is low in the sky behind you. If it’s too high, the underside of the bird is heavily shadowed.

• Autofocus really helps. It works best against a plain background; clouds or vegetation detected by the sensors can cause focus to move from the subject. Beware of foreground branches or reeds that can cause similar errors. Some of your camera/lens combinations may autofocus faster than others. If your lens has a focus range limiter, set it on the distant range for faster autofocusing for all but the closest birds.

• When the sky is aglow at sunrise or sunset, think silhouettes. For these shots I prefer automatic exposure via aperture priority and evaluative/matrix or center-weighted average metering, unless the subject is almost frame filling. Here’s why:

• Manual exposure with spot metering on the sky also works well, but keep in mind that light can vary considerably over the sky and changes quickly as the sun rises and sets. Autoexposure allows me to quickly shoot across the sky (although sometimes I wait for birds to enter a very narrow window where the light is particularly nice). I set my exposure compensation between zero and +1, which usually produces pleasing results. The amount of compensation is somewhat subjective and alters the mood of the shot; in this situation there’s usually no one "correct" exposure.

• Note that these same metering principles apply when the birds are on water glowing with the reflection of sunrise/sunset in the background.