I don’t know about any of you but I find photographing groups of birds to be a challenging endeavor, especially when they are moving as fast as these Roseate Spoonbills were. How do you show just how many birds there are but still have a well-defined subject? With a long telephoto lens, you usually only get one or maybe two in focus with everything else blurred into oblivion. With a shorter focal length there usually isn’t enough separation from the background to make the subjects stand out or there isn’t enough detail to give a good visual impact. In this case I tried using a 400mm lens and stopped it down to f/8 and even f/11 combined with getting quite low to yield a nicer background. The f/11 shots were mostly too blurred from all the subject movement (those heads swing back and forth awfully quick) but the f/8 shots, like this one, seemed to be a good compromise. If you have any tips to share for photographing large groups of birds please share.

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Platalea ajaja