Wildlife Photography How To – Common Kestrel – “Flaps 30, Gear Down, “

As a specialist in natural history and wildlife photography it’s always difficult to decide what are your favorite images from all the frames you shoot – after all, you are quite “emotionally close” to every single one of them!

Being in it to make money in order to live makes the job a little more difficult for the simple reason that, being a photographer, the images you REALLY like are hardly ever the images the picture buyers like. So in order to make a living you have to devote the majority of your camera time to producing commercially viable images – not gallery images.

But occasionally you’ll come up with a shot that satisfies both sides of the equation – you love it yourself and are really proud of it; and it SELLS WELL!

So I thought I’d post a series of my own images that satisfy both myself and the picture buyers, and I’m going to start with one of my top 5 sellers in the last 18 months – your Uncle Andy’s infamous Kestrel shot.

Common Kestrel Landing
©Andy Astbury/Wildlife in Pixels

Shot in June of 2012 at Poolbridge Farm in Yorkshire, I approached the entire shoot day with this particular shot in mind – you have to have a goal set even with wildlife photography, otherwise you just end up shooting at random; and you HAVE to be in control of at least something other than the camera!

I’d seen all the usual “kestrel perched” shots that were coming out Poolbridge, but I wanted something a little different – and I got this, which was just what I wanted.

Remember PPPPP – positive planning prevents poor performance!

So here’s how the shot was planned and executed:

This position in the Kestrels flight to the perch is BEHIND the perch – in this case an old wooden farm gate – so it happens BEFORE the bird lands on the perch.

So primary focus has to be BEHIND the perch.

Ok, we’re all good so far, but there are some very important factors to take into consideration.  We want a head-on shot, the bird is flying at about 7 meters per second, and we need to take the shot when the bird is around 1 meter behind the perch.

So here’s our main problem – head on means that the closing distance rate between bird and lens is at its fastest possible, and sadly there isn’t an auto focus system on the planet that will keep up with this small target flying straight down the lens axis and guarantee you the shot.

Therefore, sad to say, but AF is out and manual focus is in!

The bird itself is a mature female so she has a wingspan of about 30 inches.

So the shot calls for the following criteria – set the camera at a distance that will capture a 30 inch wide target about 30 inches behind the perch, with a 500mm f4 lens at about 80% of full frame width.  The lens needs to be manually pre-focused at the required distance and an aperture set that will give sufficient depth of field to give a good degree of sharpness over the nearest parts of the bird – beak to feet.

Simple maths tells me I need to have the bird arriving at “position X” about 40 feet or 12 meters in front of the lens.

So now it’s easy; just get my mate Mike who was with me on the day to stand about a meter behind the gate post with his hands outstretched 30 inches apart, frame up so his hands are both well in frame and about a third of the frame from its top edge.  Then manually focus on his cammo patterned shirt front making sure that both lens and camera body are in MF mode and I’m all set to take the shot from a lens point of view.

Set the camera to maximum frame rate (never a good idea usually on a Nikon as it locks the AF but we are not using AF so it doesn’t matter in this instance), and now I’m all set.

The bird is 100% wild and has a nest full of screaming hungry kids to feed, but she knows that if she’s seen people about then there’s usually a tasty morsel of food on the old gate post. She perches in one of two trees while she’s deciding if its safe to come to the perch, but her approach is only head on if she’s coming in from one of them.

So now its just a case of sitting and waiting until she’s in that particular tree, and then waiting some more until she begins her approach.

Once she’s on her way I pick her up in the viewfinder of the camera when she’s about half way across the field (she’s out of focus and very fuzzy when I begin to follow her), keep her fuzzy shape in frame and she gets sharper as she gets closer, then just as she starts to get some some definition to her in the viewfinder I just press and hold down the shutter to shoot an entire buffer full of frames: remembering to keep the camera moving as it was otherwise the composition will be a bit off!

It’s a technique rather like shot-gun shooting – you need to follow trough while squeezing the trigger, otherwise you miss behind!

Don’t get me wrong, the shot wasn’t “in the can” on the first attempt, and nor was it on the forth! But the fifth time she came I nailed it. After that all I had to do was try and repeat the shot over and over again and try to get it all to come together with some good light – we got there in the end.

All in all the shot has made over 500 sales in the last 12 months or so, in all guises from small website jpegs to full size prints – so buyers like it – and I’m pleased with the shot from both an aesthetic and technical standpoint.

And it’s even been on the TV – 4 times now!

So, the job’s a good ‘un!

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