Swallows Take Flight

Swallows take FlightToday celebrated my workplaces annual Big Day Out. Held at the beautiful Long Bay beach, the sun was beating down by early afternoon, and those of whom had not brought our togs, wished we had.

Taking a moment for a stroll, armed with my Ricoh GRD IV, I captured a number of images, both showing the beautiful beach, and also the drought like conditions that have been sweeping the country (Luckily for Auckland, no where near as bad as farmers North of Auckland). Walking under a selection of trees, I was amazed to see literally multiple tens (lets estimate 30) of Swallows darting in and out of the trees. All the other animals I had seen were sheltering under trees out of the heat.

Now looking to capture any close up action of a small bird with a 28mm lens is never going to happen, so I framed up the trees and sky and looked to capture a silhouette of several birds as they flew overhead. Todays image being my pick of the bunch for today.

Using Gimp, I slightly cropped the image in post processing.

Weekend time!

 

Swallow Dogfight

On the same day I caught ‘Air Brakes‘ I also just managed to catch a few swallows darting around. Cool little birds, unless they are perched, they seem to travel at lightening speed and zig zagging all around, hence todays title ‘Swallow Dogfight’.

Captured on the Nex 5N and Jupiter-11 lens, I was quite happy I managed to get one as the Jupiter is not the fastest to focus manual lens! Cropped to get the loosing dog fighter (well – other swallow), the long narrow format reminds me of some of the skinny long portrait Japanese paintings – something I might have more of a go at some time.

Oh – and just in case there is confusion in my title, I mean dogfight as in two planes in close combat – not the bad (other bad?) kind…

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