Male Bufflehead Reflection

This photo was not a simple capture - probably the most complicated I have ever executed, so I will explain.  I had experience photographing this species in full sun early in the morning, and that was the case here. That was the best time to have enough shutter speed (with the limited ISO to get ungrainy shots for the camera used) to stop action and illuminate this particular subject properly, because with higher sun the florescence on the head and neck cannot be captured very well. I knew from experience the manual exposure settings required so I would slightly pop the brilliant white on the bird's head and be able to bring out as much detail and florescence in the bird's dark areas of the head and neck.  I knew I needed 1/3200 sec to stop action if it ran into flight (other times at 1/2500 sec many shots came out too blurry for me). I was photographing at pretty close range out of my van window, as many birds in front of me would fly away if I got out, but they accepted my presence as long as I stayed in my van.  I used a beanbag (similar to the Naturescapes SkimmerSack II Beanbag) and a panning ground plate (similar to the Visual Echoes Panning Plate) so I could stabilize the 600mm lens and camera and pan horizontally very smoothly - this took lots of practice to accomplish, while locking focus on subjects. My camera was set up for continuous high-speed shooting and on AI Servo Mode. I expanded the focusing points to 7 points around the center point, as I found with experience I had better luck maintaining locked focus like this, just in case I wasn't perfect staying on the bird. All of the birds (which were located to my left about 20 yards) flew away further to the left down the straight creek - and landed about 60-80 yards away.  But one male bird was under water when they took off.  He surfaced to the right of my shadow line which was pointing (on purpose) directly perpendicular to the direction of the creek.  I knew from experience that he would probably want to join the group.  And the early morning’s calm water provided the opportunity for a reflection shot of this bird’s running takeoff.

Successfully capturing this image requires knowing the clue it would give before taking off.  It raises its head up tall and straight, looking forward, and about 1 second later it takes off like its shot out of a canon.  I had to begin moving the camera and lens to the left at the right time, and at the right speed, just to keep the bird in the frame, but needed to keep the center of the frame on the bird as much as possible, preferably toward the head and neck. I took a burst of 4 shots (with camera at 8 shots per second) as it ran past my shadow line.  That is where I would have the greatest opportunity to catch the florescence of its head, but only if its head was at the correct angle (I took this type of shot a few years before but the bird angled its head slightly away and there was no florescence).  I had luck with this shot not only because the head angle was good but because he was closer than I expected and I caught a shot with the wings down, so the wings and their reflection stayed in the frame, and I caught good enough focus - sometimes the wing action alters the focus too much.

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Great! Perfectly timed.

Walking in water... I saw this in the latest Uploads. Nice! 

The reflection is so clear. Nice capture!

 Cool!