Going Home
Limited edition archival pigment print produced on 100% acid free archival paper.
Edition: 250
Print dimensions: 420 mm x 297 mm
Image dimensions: 320 mm x 197 mm
Purchase includes:
Print - signed and numbered, with a hologram on the back carrying a unique serial number.
Certificate of authenticity with a matching hologram and serial number.
Archival presentation box
Registration of your unique print on www.myartregistry.com
FRAME AND PASSEPARTOUT ARE NOT INCLUDED
Limited edition archival pigment print produced on 100% acid free archival paper.
Edition: 250
Print dimensions: 420 mm x 297 mm
Image dimensions: 320 mm x 197 mm
Purchase includes:
Print - signed and numbered, with a hologram on the back carrying a unique serial number.
Certificate of authenticity with a matching hologram and serial number.
Archival presentation box
Registration of your unique print on www.myartregistry.com
FRAME AND PASSEPARTOUT ARE NOT INCLUDED
Limited edition archival pigment print produced on 100% acid free archival paper.
Edition: 250
Print dimensions: 420 mm x 297 mm
Image dimensions: 320 mm x 197 mm
Purchase includes:
Print - signed and numbered, with a hologram on the back carrying a unique serial number.
Certificate of authenticity with a matching hologram and serial number.
Archival presentation box
Registration of your unique print on www.myartregistry.com
FRAME AND PASSEPARTOUT ARE NOT INCLUDED
The story behind the image:
Kingfishers are notoriously difficult to capture in flight.
There’s a certain twig this particular female likes to dive from with a nice clear background behind. I can wait days, sometimes even weeks for her to come and perch on this twig as it offers the best chance for good flight shots.
When she does come I pick a spot to focus on and I wait and pray for success. If she dives diagonally off the branch my focus point is off and the opportunity is wasted. She might come back to the branch again and I’ll have another chance or she might fly off and I have to wait more days or weeks for another attempt. A couple of months before I got this shot I had discovered back button focus and was convinced by a friend to make the switch. I won’t bore you with the details but it involves taking the focusing step and splitting that off to a different button. The advantage is that you can prefocus on a fixed spot and the camera won’t accidentally search for and find a different spot to focus on when the action kicks off.
The disadvantage is that you now have to remember to press TWO buttons when you’re shooting and need to lock focus. The action happens so fast and your brain in these moments kicks back into auto mode. It took me a couple of weeks to rewire my circuits, to get to the point where I could do it without thinking. I suffered a lot during the transition. I missed some fantastic opportunities that only happen once every couple of months because I just forgot to press the back button to focus. But I stuck with it because I understood it was a really good technique to up my game and eventually I came out the other end of that dark learning tunnel, confident that I would have more opportunities and that next time I would be ready.
On this day the stars were aligned - calm conditions, good light, which is very important because without it you can’t get a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the action (they fly VERY fast indeed) and I managed to focus on the right spot and press the shutter at exactly the right moment.
For each successful flight shot there are probably 300 in the bin.
This picture features in my personal project The Heart of the Mater