Photography Practice

Photographing birds in flight is hard for me.  Even photographing birds at all is difficult.  I watch a bunch of youtubes and read a lot, but find many excellent photographers disagree.  One will say "back button focus" is the way to go.  Another will say that is for old style cameras and better to shoot with one finger so your thumb is free to change shutter speed or aperture or ISO.  But what about motion blur? Another will say use automatic settings.  And I find myself so concerned about the exposure triangle that I don't concentrate on framing.  And even finding the darn birds with their protective coloration can be challenging. 

I can take a reasonably sharp picture and well exposed picture whether the bird is flying or not.  

But then there is depth of field, how to use a telephoto and a high shutter speed and still keep the ISO low enough so it is not grainy?

Here is a baby, with the mommy behind him on the left, and daddy in the center.  Daddy looks good, but not baby, and mommy isn't even visible.

Here are mommy and baby.

But while baby is sharp, mommy isn't and she is a bit grainy too.

This duckling is pretty clear!  Yay Joel.

And the white pelican and egret came out okay I think.

And that was today's practice session.