And you thought whippets at speed are hard to shoot? Well you can think again…
I had thought that, after many years of practising my skills of action photography capturing super fast lurchers and super agile whippets, I would be able to capture any animal on camera recently competently. So it came as a bit of a surprise that my first attempted to shoot the swallows in flight at the first summer at our cottage failed miserably, resulting in some blurry swallows shots, but mostly, empty frames.
So I went on a quest to master shooting swallows in flight. With a swallows nest under our eves, at least one nest in our neighbour’s shed and many more in the surrounding areas, we had swallows in abundance. The power lines out the back were a favourite place for the swallows and their young to congregate, and at the hight of summer, I would always loose count at 80 or 90.
Key to the quest was watching the swallows, determining their favourite perches and flying routes, before getting the camera out to try to capture them. But then the wind changed, and I was back to square one.
Here are some good and bad shots from this summer. The best ones are the six in the left two columns. Unfortunately the swallows headed for Africa by the time I nearly started to get the hang of it. Ach well, they’ll be back next year for sure.