Bird of Prey

I'd so hate to be that fish right now

Naivasha was absolutely awesome this weekend, perhaps my best ever trip there yet. So much to do and so little time

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This is shot of an African Fish Eagle was taken at Lake Naivasha in Kenya, and Its hard to explain how difficult a shot it was. It took over 100 shots, out of which I was only satisfied with 5.

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Technique: I was advised by the fishermen around that you had to focus on where you felt the fish to get a good shot. That simply proved virtually impossible, even when a fish was thrown for it to catch coz the boat would always move around in the water. So I had to opt to tracking it in flight until it began to dive and then let the continuous drive on the 60D take over.

There's hardly any time to think, so I had to set the camera to sports mode and begin tracking the eagle's flight once it took off the perch. On average, from the time the eagle left the perch to when it caught the fish would generally take 10-15 seconds, so there just wasn't much time to fiddle with the camera at all.

To prevent the camera from continuously trying to find focus when the eagle made its dive I had to continue tracking the bird manually by continuously rapidly half pressing the shutter until I was ready to let burst mode take over.

Camera: Canon 60D
Lens: Canon 70-300mm L IS (What a lens!)
Shutter: 1/1600s at f 5.6
ISO: 320