Wednesday, September 19, 2012

Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica)

I decided to take some photos of birds in flight at Coyote Hills Regional Park to practice taking photos of fast moving objects. Here are the photos I took. Coyote Hills Regional Park is a East Bay Regional Park located in Fremont, CA. The area is a salt water marsh with a lot of waterfowls and other animals. I sometimes go there because the birds there are easy to spot as there are no tall trees or foliage in the park. The following photos are of the Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica).

我最近拍了一些鸟正在飞行的照片。这些照片是在 Coyote Hills Regional Park 拍的。这个公园是在加州的 Fremont。今天这些鸟叫 Barn Swallow。

Full Resolution Photos and Prints: If you want to see full resolution photos or buy prints of any of the photos you see, they are up on my portfolio for viewing. To see my best Coyote Hills Regional Park photos, use this link. To see my best bird photos of 2012, use this link. For all the photos taken in 2012 in Coyote Hills regional Park, use this link.

Message From The Photographer: Hello guys, sorry about not posting recently. I have been very busy with school work and haven't had much time to spend on my photos. In fact, these are the last of the photos I have ready to post. The rest of my photos are still in RAW format and I like to do some post processing before I post them. Now that we are done with the bad news, here are some good news. On Friday, from 6 AM to 10 AM PST, there will be a space shuttle fly-over at the NASA Moffet Field near Mountain View, CA. I will be there to take photos of the event. I'm pretty sure this will be pretty cool for many of you guys. If you don't know about this event, you can read about it here. Too lazy to get into the details here on the blog. 😂 I'm a photographer, not an article writer. LOL I will do my best to get the photos processed and up on this blog the same day or the day after. 😁 Alright, enough with the message, let's continue to the photos.

When I shown this photo to my friend, he thought it was a fish... I would have cropped it all the way, but I thought the clouds in the background made a good effect for the photo. 


Photography Tip: For photos of fast moving objects, set your camera on Shutter Priority Mode (Tv) and set your camera to take multiple shots. In Shutter Priority Mode, you set the shutter speed and your camera will set the corresponding aperture to make sure your shot is correctly exposed. If the values flash in your camera, it means correct exposure can not be reached (generally underexposure). To fix the underexposure problem, either slow down your shutter speed or boost the ISO. If your camera offers focus tracking, use that too (it is AI SERVO on Canon cameras). Your first few shots may be blurry, you may only have 1 good shot in hundreds of shots. The thing is practice makes perfect and even professionals will screw up on fast moving objects. The thing to remember is if a shot looks bad, take it and look at it and see how to improve the next time you try to do a similar photo. Photography is hard to master and will take time, sometimes even your entire lifetime! It's not an overnight thing and you shouldn't feel sad over a ruined shot. I'm saying this because I often do get sad over a ruined shot, but the thing is, don't look back the past, just look at how you can do better in the future. This not only applies to photography but to daily life too. :)




This is all the photos I have for today! I hope you have enjoyed these photos. I will try my best to get some of my photos finished processing. Don't forget to check back on Friday or Saturday for those Space Shuttle photos! (If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably missed my message above. If that is the case, you can scroll up and read it.) Please don't forget to share my blog posts with your friends! If you would like to get notifications next time I post, you can "Like" me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter and Google+. These links can also be found on the top of the right sidebar.