Feet First, a photo from Scottish Borders, Scotland

Photographer's Note

Part of a Falconry demonstration. A Harris Hawk.
The trick is to get the four foot wingspan through an eighteen inch space at speed and gain the prize.
Expertly accomplished, feet first.
Quite spectacular!

tyro, alonsote, AROBN54, ollie59 has marked this note useful

Critiques | Translate

AROBN54 (11067) 2007-08-28 20:00

Hi, Dougie,
Flippin' awesome shot! The timing on this is absolutely stunning. To have caught that bird going full speed at just the moment he clears that guys arms is incredible. I love the way the guy has his eyes closed. Beautiful clarity, razor sharp detail, just a MAD action shot. Utterly amazing. Warm regards,
Shelly

melmcree (18) 2007-08-29 12:36

Very awesome photo. I love the expressions and your timing was excellent.

tyro (13111) 2007-08-31 9:54

Hello, Dougie.

Quite spectacular? No. Bloody spectacular!!

And so is your photograph.

This is clearly a fast-moving target but you've frozen it solid at 1/1500 sec. - in fact so much so that I had to look twice as I thought the man on the right was holding the bird or something. Obviously modern-day focal-plane shutters move a lot faster than the old ones because with them you always ended up with some image distortion because of the slow-moving "slit" of the shutter (racing cars with oval wheels, etc.).

A fantastic picture taken with precise timing!

Excellent!

Best Wishes,

John.

P.S. Tell me Dougie - do you ever use any of the shutter speeds between 10 seconds and 1/1000th? :-)

ollie59 (796) 2007-09-02 9:53

wow dougie this is something else my friend ,to get such detail and at the right moment ,its a perfect shot for me
fantastic action shot that you ought to submit to a magazine or two
well done my friend
ollie

chriswhitley (2001) 2007-09-17 14:06

Hi Dougie,
Amazing shot and something quite different. Sometimes I fail to understand why some shots gain so few points on TE and others so many! This deserves more. Chris