After finding myself with little to do on Thursday I decided for an impromptu visit down to Gigrin Farm to do a spot of red kite photography. The weather looked promising, sunny skies all day, turned out that we had sun for 20% of the time.
Although I have done a fair bit of photography I have never done a full day with birds so I packed as much kit as I could carry including camera bodies, lenses – 100-400, 300 2.8, 1.4 and 2x extenders, tripod and flash. After a brief 4 hour drive I arrived and paid my £15 for the hide as the £20 hides were already booked.
At Gigrin farm they feed the birds here so you can always be sure of plenty of action (see photo) however having 100’s of birds at one time initially made it harder as I was looking everywhere.
I set up my tripod and mounted my 1dx with 300 2.8 and a 2 x converter. Now many of you will know far more than I do about photographing birds so here is what I learnt for beginners:
1) Using a tripod to track a bird is a skill that needs to be mastered! I have not master this and in fact found it most infuriating so ended up hand holding for the entire afternoon. It allowed me to move much more freely even if my arm did want to fall off after a while!
2) I believe a gimble would have made the tracking easier on the tripod.
3) 400mm is not long enough on full frame but is plenty on a crop
4) At 600mm hand holding I found it hard to lift up and spot my subject immediately but at closer to 500mm I found it much much easier
5) The flash stayed in my bag all day apart from a shot my friend took of me!
6) Following a bird round is much easier for you and the camera to get the shot rather than waiting for the bird to come into the shot
I did have a great time and would recommend it, I do believe there are other spots too where red kites are in abundance now but I fancied a long drive and from London to Gigrin and back in a day is a long drive indeed!
I took about 1100 photos, lost around 300 through a nasty card corruption unfortunately and deleted anything flying away (another 30%). I have cropped and edited everything as much as I can to cover up some poor photographic skills in this area and have these photos to share:
Just before the feeding frenzy starts! (Higher quality images available at http://500px.com/martin_abela/sets/kites_at_gigrin_farm)
Red Kites (1 of 9).jpg
Mine!
Red Kites (4 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (5 of 9).jpg
A rook getting free lunch too!
Red Kites (6 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (8 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (9 of 9).jpg
Although I have done a fair bit of photography I have never done a full day with birds so I packed as much kit as I could carry including camera bodies, lenses – 100-400, 300 2.8, 1.4 and 2x extenders, tripod and flash. After a brief 4 hour drive I arrived and paid my £15 for the hide as the £20 hides were already booked.
At Gigrin farm they feed the birds here so you can always be sure of plenty of action (see photo) however having 100’s of birds at one time initially made it harder as I was looking everywhere.
I set up my tripod and mounted my 1dx with 300 2.8 and a 2 x converter. Now many of you will know far more than I do about photographing birds so here is what I learnt for beginners:
1) Using a tripod to track a bird is a skill that needs to be mastered! I have not master this and in fact found it most infuriating so ended up hand holding for the entire afternoon. It allowed me to move much more freely even if my arm did want to fall off after a while!
2) I believe a gimble would have made the tracking easier on the tripod.
3) 400mm is not long enough on full frame but is plenty on a crop
4) At 600mm hand holding I found it hard to lift up and spot my subject immediately but at closer to 500mm I found it much much easier
5) The flash stayed in my bag all day apart from a shot my friend took of me!
6) Following a bird round is much easier for you and the camera to get the shot rather than waiting for the bird to come into the shot
I did have a great time and would recommend it, I do believe there are other spots too where red kites are in abundance now but I fancied a long drive and from London to Gigrin and back in a day is a long drive indeed!
I took about 1100 photos, lost around 300 through a nasty card corruption unfortunately and deleted anything flying away (another 30%). I have cropped and edited everything as much as I can to cover up some poor photographic skills in this area and have these photos to share:
Just before the feeding frenzy starts! (Higher quality images available at http://500px.com/martin_abela/sets/kites_at_gigrin_farm)
Red Kites (1 of 9).jpg
Mine!
Red Kites (4 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (5 of 9).jpg
A rook getting free lunch too!
Red Kites (6 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (8 of 9).jpg
Red Kites (9 of 9).jpg
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