Wild Bird Trust photographers of the week

I am humble to have my pictures together with the multitude of talents that is on show at Wild Bird Trust. This week is really spectacular but I feel that this picture deserve a place among the others. You can see this weeks pictures here.

The picture is from a workshop I did in Hungary in the middle of June. I had been to the Bee-eater colony a couple of days earlier and this was the second time there so I knew what to expect and that is why I could take this photo.

What I wanted that day was action photos and what I had seen the other day was 4 different types and one of those would be almost impossible.

The ones I could take were a “take off” picture, a landing picture and a picture of handing over a bee. The one I feel would be impossible was the hunt and catching of a bee. This would be impossible because the hide was too close to the action.

This particular morning was really foggy and this picture is actually the last one I a series of two pictures. I had my focus on the bird sitting on the branch just in front of me when I saw the other bird taking off from a branch behind. The distance wasn´t far so it couldn´t pick up that much speed and that was one of the things that made the picture. The second is that the bird is landing exactly by the side of the other and that wasn´t something I saw many times, just a few. The third is that the gaze is straight towards me and the other is looking away, probably because it either wanted to see the approach or that it´s searching for a bee to catch. The fourth is that the birds are more or less parallel and that make them both sharp even if small parts of the approaching bird are in a bit of a blur. The fifth is the background and the smooth bokeh. It was interesting to have the opportunity to shoot with this background because many Bee-eater photos are with a light background because they breed in sand burrows. Still it wasn´t easy because the picture got darker and you really need to up the shutter to freeze these quick birds and that meant higher ISO.

I have to thank Steve Boyes that is doing a tremendous work with Wild Bird trust and I don´t understand how he can find time to update everything getting new photographers to join the cause and sending in pictures.

Now I keep my fingers crossed that the photo also will end up on the front cover of Africa Geographic’s January issue.