Photographing birds in flight is more than just technical settings and knowing which auto focus area modes work best for the situation. There are techniques such as AF bumping and strategies for how and when to begin acquiring focus in order to increase success rates to name just a couple. But behind all of this, before we ever begin shooting, before we even pick up the camera, there are three considerations we must take into account: light, background, and wind direction.
If you want to be successful and capturing photographs of birds in flight, then you have to get all three of these things to line up first.
This may seem like a back to the basics sort of video. It’s not. These three things are the base in which your bird in flight photographs are built around. It doesn’t matter how sound your tracking skills are and how dialed in your auto focus settings are for this type of photography. If the light sucks, if the background isn’t interesting, and if you are set up in the wrong location for the given wind direction, then you are stacking all of the odds against yourself.
Check out the video above! If nothing else, you get to watch me accidently fall off my boat while filming =)