Nope not Buffalo chicken wings! I love to eat them but this post is about wings on birds that fly...
Last Sunday, somehow, I ended up getting birds in a frolicking mood with wings spread in various poses. Some on ground and some in the air. Their wings made a grand spectacle, which it took all my skills as an amateur photographer, to capture..
As we can imagine, birds flap their wings very fast. They flap when the are on ground to rid themselves of dust and insects and then, of course, when they fly, they flap to keep themselves afloat in air.
While the birds that I encountered did not flap as fast as the hummingbird, which can flap at around 700 flaps per second, it was still quite a fast flap. Therefore, it was quite difficult to capture a sharp picture of their wings in various poses.
I managed to use a combination of tracking with my lens and a fast shutter speed (over 1/2000s) and shot a sequence of frames (10-30 frames at a burst) to capture these nice freezes of wings. Here are the best ones I captured...
Starting with an easy one at first - A scenic view of a Darter spreading its wings and sitting still to dry after a dip in water....
The next was a Peacock which took off with it's long beautiful tail floating behind it. It was not flying too fast but to track it in my lens without cutting off parts of it's wings or tail as it flew over a dry riverbed was the challenge...
Next I caught a river tern hovering near the lakeshore in a beautiful flight pose...
The last but the grandest, was this bar headed goose, in a Titanic like pose... 😀 saying - "I am the king of the world..". This was very difficult to capture because the goose was too shy and any time I tried to lift my lens for a click, it ran or flew away. It took more than an hour of stalking it quietly and patiently lying on my belly on lakeshore to finally capture these poses...
I also captured another pose, which I think is attractive too..
In this one, the wings are a bit folded but it looks pretty.
Which pose do you like? Please feel free to comment and let me know.
I think such captures in wild are a form of photographic art and I enjoy it immensely. I guess I can enjoy such creation of art till one day, finally AI takes over such creations and cameras will not be needed. Do not believe me? Take a look at this marvelous creative effort by 
Anyway - that was a day of frolic of wings and I thoroughly enjoyed it.
What do you think ? Did you enjoy the wings? Do you think it was worth it? Have you attempted or would you attempt anything like this in photography? If so, please share your experience in comments.
Please comment freely and let me know your opinion. I will try to bring many different types of wildlife photos/macro/Astro posts to the community. Feedback and comments are welcome,. I am still learning many techniques and always value feedback from experts in this community.
Have a nice day everyone. Cheers!
