Osprey hawk flying away from the camera. J.N. “Ding” Darling National Wildlife Refuge. Sanibel Island, Fla. Paul Goldfinger. April 23, 2020. Wingspan is 5 feet. It weighs 3-4 pounds and could fly away with a 4 pound trout in its claws. The female is bigger than the male.
By Paul Goldfinger, photography editor @Blogfinger.net
We were standing by the side of the road where an adult Osprey was sitting quietly on a low branch. It is unusual to get so close. We were snapping portraits of the barely moving bird which seemed like it was posing. I was using a manual digital camera, a Leica M-9 with a 75mm (short tele) lens.
All of a sudden the bird flew past me. I brought the camera to my eye and then tried to follow the osprey. I could only manage two frames, and as you can see, the shot above was obtained as it zoomed past. I had preset the exposure (f stop and shutter speed) and the focus, so my only photographic concern was to capture the fast moving bird without blurring the image. The blur could result from the bird in motion and/or shaking the camera.
My camera is a manual classic which does not have auto-focus, auto exposure, or anti-shake technology.
It’s similar to trap shooting where the rifle is in motion as the trigger is pulled once or maybe twice. With this flying bird, you follow with the camera while pressing the shutter release as fast as you can. Getting many exposures quickly improves the chance of having a superior result–but I only got two.
The problem of blur relates to camera shake and the bird’s rapid motion.
The issue of freezing the bird in flight relates to the shutter speed which a basic camera setting.
With a fast shutter speed, there will be less moving object blur, and if you have the camera set to a very fast speed, like 1/2000 second, you could actually freeze the bird in flight.
Unlike sports where you can predict that a point guard might drive to the basket, I wasn’t planning that the relaxed, sitting bird would fly just then—-but it did, and I could not reset the shutter speed which luckily was set at 1/500 second which is moderately fast, and that is why the bird is only slightly blurry.
And, as noted, some of the overall blur, including the bird, is due to camera shake. New cameras have anti-shake technology which lets you hand-hold a heavy lens or work with slow shutter speeds. Without the anti-shake, if a slow shutter speed is required, you need, like a sniper, to hold your breath and, with a steady hand, gently squeeze the trigger and hope for the best.
Sometimes a photographer won’t mind some blur. That could occur with street photography where you are aiming at a person who is moving, and a little blur might be desirable as it suggests motion in a “still” photograph.
If you are shooting for Blogfinger’s “girls in their summer clothes,” you want a candid, in-motion, action photograph, not a frozen centerfold. So you can intentionally create some blur.
And a young lady engaging a hula hoop, which I have photographed at the OG flea market, is so much more interesting with a little blur.
New cameras have motor drives that would have allowed a photographer taking this hawk picture to obtain 14-16 frames per second instead of my two, and he could have had all those frames to choose from. But I am wedded to the mind-set of the past.
The digital age has changed photography in so many ways. Cartier-Bresson, the famous French 35 mm street photographer obtained his images by obtaining one frame only, at a time.
But his much envied artistry involved pressing the shutter release at exactly the right time, ie “the decisive moment,” a variable that deals with composition.
The modern day action photographer doesn’t quite need that talent–he can choose the best image out of many. Of course, he needs to make the right choice.
Cartier-Bresson took a famous photo of a man jumping across a large puddle. He took one frame, with his Leica, and it was perfect. But now, with 14-16 frames per second, all he would have to do was aim his camera at the man as he began the jump and just hold down the button, later selecting the decisive moment as captured by electronic wizardry.
Incidentally, Cartier- Bresson had a wild sex life as a young man, so maybe that is how he got good with the “decisive moment.”
Another Leica photographer with Pulitzer winning camera skills, Robert Capa, was also extremely popular with the ladies, but he also had the looks of a movie star.
A modern day Lothario might have trouble with too many exposures to select from–you can choose to turn off that feature.
Here’s a link to a recent Blogfinger post about black and white photography:
“The Black and White of it All”