Hover Upbeat

The story behind the image:

The stars aligned. It had been at least a couple of weeks since I had seen Elvis (my nickname for this little king of the river). On this day conditions were perfect – the river was smooth as glass, the light was perfect and even the branch he was diving from, it doesn’t get better than this.

I held my breath, aimed where I expected him to dive and waited. Suddenly I heard a collective gasp from the onlookers. I looked up. Instead of diving he had flown UP and was in the middle of a hover. There was no time to try to find him again in my viewfinder so I resorted to ‘spray and pray’ mode.

I shot about 60 pictures in that burst. I reviewed the first 20 or so in camera –  nothing. Back to first position, try again but that was the last we were to see of him that day. About a week later I was clearing the card from the camera when I found them – a whole burst of them. Hover shots – all in frame, perfectly exposed and pin sharp. That was a very happy day.

You might also like to see the other images in this sequence - Poised and Hover Downbeat

For those who are interested in the technical challenges of this shot - the downbeat and upbeat of the hover are within 1/5000th of a second of each other (which explains why I miss the shot 99% of the time). He’s a slippery one.