I’m very particular about backgrounds because they can make or break a picture. Therefore, this is an unusual image for me because I didn’t replace the background with out of focus foliage. When a background is clean, unobtrusive and non-distracting, all of the attention goes to the subject which is how a photograph is usually supposed to work. With this flight shot, however, I left the foliage with all its complexity and graphic elements to show the jungle environment in which this bird, a Montezuma oropendola, lives here in Costa Rica.
Every time I’ve come here I have tried to get a shot of this bird in flight, and I failed until today. To finally capture this, I aimed my 500mm f/4 Canon telephoto at the bird as it perched on a branch and waited with my shutter finger ready. The 1Dx Mark II was set to manual exposure mode and auto ISO so I could choose a fast shutter -- 1/2500 in this case. I set the aperture to f/6.3, even though I would have preferred more depth of field, but the light level was so low that I didn’t want excessive ISO if I could help it. Because the bird was far away -- about 100 yards or so -- depth of field wasn’t that critical anyway. The ISO was 10,000, and although I would have preferred a lower number, I needed the fast shutter speed, and thus the high ISO, to freeze the wings. I was using AI servo, or continuous focus tracking. For the focus points I used a small 4-point cluster in the center of the viewfinder.
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