I recently had the chance to take a bunch of photos at the British Birds of Prey Centre in south Wales.
Despite somewhat overcast skies I got some shots I'm pretty happy with, so this'll be an ongoing thread of good birbs, as and when I get to editing them :D
This whole shoot was a real learning experience for me.
I went in relying heavily on my camera's aperture priority mode, until it very rapidly became clear that I was going to have to take a lot more control over my exposures and shutter speeds for these fast-moving friends.
By the time I took these shots of Ozzy in flight, the late afternoon clouds had rolled in, so these were a great test of what I'd learned over the course of the day!
This li'l kestrel was described as "a challenge" to photograph, which he immediately demonstrated by zipping off between the trees and perching on the top of a nearby greenhouse :D
There's something about this shot of Boomerang - about the leap into flight - that reminds me of Monster Hunter design, like this guy's a tiny wyvern 🐉
After a busy couple of days, I had a chance to revisit the shots I took of Boomerang in flight, and with a little editing work, they turned out better than I expected!
(Full license details are included with the files, but per my usual stance it's essentially "fine for commercial use, as long as you're not 'just selling my work', and don't use for NFTs/crypto/AI art corpuses".
If you make anything based on any of these photos, I'd be delighted to know about it!)
Kermit was a relatively recent rescue when I visited, back up to flying weight but still finding his wings, so unfortunately I didn't get to see him fly.
What I did get was a lot of S-tier grumbly expressions!
(These birds weren't in the public aviary, but we had a few minutes to walk round a more secluded secondary aviary, home primarily to rescued birds in rehabilitation.
We weren't formally introduced, but I like to think that if we had been, they would've chuckled darkly and invited me to join an arcane covenant.)
When I took these shots, this owl was my first bird of the day.
Her flight was leisurely by bird of prey standards, but she definitely made me realise how much control I'd need over my camera settings to get the shots I wanted!
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