When I show a picture like this giant river otter with a freshly caught catfish, a lot of things had to come together in an instant to make it work: the light, the angle of the fish relative to the plane of the digital sensor, the speed of the camera in shooting many frames per second, the speed and accuracy of the autofocus, and my hand/eye coordination. One could say I was lucky to capture this, but keep in mind that what you never see in my posts are all the pictures I missed because the photographic factors just didn't fall into place. For this image, I focused my attention on this particular otter because I saw him struggling with such a huge fish and I thought it was almost comical. So, I was ready the moment I recognized a good opportunity. I shot this about 20 minutes after sunrise, and my settings were 1/2000, f/5.6, 3200, and I used a 500mm lens with a 1.4x teleconverter, giving me 700mm of focal length, and I hand held the camera and lens in the boat.
10 Comments
Nov 27, 2016, 11:09:40 AM
Jim - Yes, it's a great time to be a photographer!
Nov 27, 2016, 9:08:09 AM
Ian - Cracking Photo Jim, I fully appreciate what it takes to get he perfect shot like this, I photograph a lot of birds in flight and Shooting up to 10fps it is not unusual to shoot upwards of 400 shots to get maybe a hand full of reasonable shots with the possibility of just one being the shot you were after. I'm just grateful Digital photography was invented.
Nov 27, 2016, 9:08:08 AM
Ian - Cracking Photo Jim, I fully appreciate what it takes to get he perfect shot like this, I photograph a lot of birds in flight and Shooting up to 10fps it is not unusual to shoot upwards of 400 shots to get maybe a hand full of reasonable shots with the possibility of just one being the shot you were after. I'm just grateful Digital photography was invented.
Nov 17, 2016, 8:29:03 PM
Jim - Thank you so much, Glenn and Sylvia. I miss you guys. It's been too long.
Nov 17, 2016, 1:09:02 PM
Glenn Rourke - What a great image Jim. Wonderful when all the stars align including the photographer! All the best to Dia and you. Glenn
Nov 17, 2016, 12:55:16 PM
Sylvia - Wow, wow, wow. Jim, what an amazing shot, beautiful lighting and excellent nature value. Love it!
Nov 16, 2016, 9:51:46 PM
Jim - Thank you, Maria and Winslow. And you're right, Bryan. We do live in an incredible time to be a photographer with all these amazing advances in technology. I wouldn't have wanted to miss this for anything.
Nov 16, 2016, 10:04:37 AM
winslow Townson - Great frame Jim!
Winslow
Nov 16, 2016, 4:09:44 AM
Bryan - Jim,
Absolutely incredible shot. What a time we live in to even have the kind of equipment available to post the numbers you mentioned. You sure are good at taking advantage of that and as they increase and become more affordable with technology advances, it gives the rest of us hope to take a shot like this. Thanks for passing all of this along on an almost daily basis.
Nov 16, 2016, 3:10:31 AM
Maria - Luck comes to those who are prepared. What a magnificent picture, all elements came together including your experienced, to capture an amazing moment.