BIF (Finally)

[John 2]

Some more Gannets from Bempton Cliffs. My attempts to capture birds in flight have always been pretty abysmal. But as Peter pointed out, the RSPB site at Bempton is a great place to practice. Not up to Dan's (Northern Focus) standards (where are you BTW?) but I was quite pleased. Comments as always, very welcome.

Both Fuji X-T2 and 100-400mm with 1.4x converter.
1.


2.

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, you got good direction of flight and reasonable sharpness.

[Wavelength]

Excellent; you did them very well!!!

[ST1]

Two lovely images John, I must revisit Bempton.

[Mike Buckley]

I don't appreciate the genre, John, but I sure do appreciate the difficulty of that style of photography. I'm sure it's especially rewarding to you to have produced better quality this time than in the past. These two images make a particularly nice pairing because of the way they so nicely complement each other.

[dennybeall]

Nice captures. Good action and sharpness. But, did you get releases from the models??

[kaneohebud]

Nice work!

[marlunn]

Nice images John, understand the difficulty level of this ! - especially love the 2nd - leaves me waiting for the stoop dive

[bnnrcn]

Both very nice John

[Geoff F]

Exposure and focus are fine.

I find that with birds in flight you often end up with unequal sized wings. When the closest wing is the largest it seems to look natural, as with the first image. But when the other way around, like the second image, with the closest wing appearing much smaller it just looks wrong to me.

So many of my flying birds shots get ditched for this one reason, even when everything else is OK.

[joebranko]

Two very nice shots John. Congratulations!

[Saorsa]

Well done, sir.

[IzzieK]

Those two are very good shots, John....so stop hitting yourself hard. #2 has a better pose as #1 is the 'normal' pose if you know what I mean...Good job.

[John 2]

Thanks all for the generous comments. I don't exaggerate my past efforts. Keeping a long lens on target is something I have yet to master - see below :

[Mike Buckley]

You've got a wonderful minimalist photo there, John, if it weren't for that bit of white in the lower left corner.

[Saorsa]

Once you get really good at it you can catch BIF unintentionally.

[John 2]

once you get really good at it you can catch bif unintentionally.

[marlunn]

now I see a series of photos here called 'Name that bird' no images of a full bird just parts of it as it leaves the frame

[John 2]

Thanks for the additional comments. More like "Spot that Bird" Mark as in spot it before it enters the frame. I seem to remember Dan mentioning that he had developed a technique of keeping both eyes open when he was following a BIF. I can't seem to make that work.