Cyanistes caeruleus

Lack of desire to pay through the nose for big expensive lenses led to

this kind og bird photo. Any critique welcome.

This shot was actually years in the making - I got the idea using a wide-angle lens to shoot birds a long time ago, but but about a year ago I decided to make it happen. So i started luring birds to my garden by constantly feeding them - meanwhile i bought a cheap radio controlled release for my camera. The stage was set.

It worked much better than i anticipated. The first shoots were blurry because the sound of the camera release scared the birds, so i brought in a flash too. A speed of about 1/100 sec and a flash fill gave me this result over and over again. A bird at the moment it takes off - the combination of natural light and flash gives the image a strange artificial feel. Almost too sharp to be real and at the same time the dynamic of the very fast wings.

The distance from the camera to the bird are about 80 cm.