Category

Birdlife

Location

Stafford, UK

Gear

Canon 5d mk3, Canon 400mm f5.6, 2x Yongnuo Flash units off camera with wireless trigger, Vanguard alta pro tripod. Black capillary matting as backdrop.

Description

One of my favourite birds, the interactions & altercations of Starlings have always entertained me & provided many opportunities to create images, however as I'm always trying to find a different approach I decided to try something new. I wanted to show the frantic action when they squabble so, as it was something they reminded me of I turned to images of dancers captured with slow shutter & rear sync flash to both show & freeze movement. I've been cultivating an area in the garden into a natural feeding area which I use for photography, in this case I simply added some black capillary matting behind the area I was shooting to highlight the birds & situated my flash units at 45% angles front & rear. From experimentation I found a shutter of 1/20th with rear curtain flash would achieve the result I was looking for. It was not an easy thing to capture however. Although I had regular visitors from my local Starling congregation & a trust built up over several generations worth of photographing them it was challenging to get the timing right between shutter & flash to give the effect I wanted. After many, many attempts I arrived at an image I was happy with.

Photographer

Adrian Clarke

Social Media

Instagram: adeclarke

Twitter: ClarkePictures

Website: http://ajc1173.wixsite.com/clarkepictures

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