Blog
November 27, 2024
I shot this image of a colony of Painted Storks on the first morning of my trip to Keoladeo National Park, Bharatpur in early November, 2024. Being my fourth trip to this location, there were a few concepts I had in mind that I really wanted to try and execute; this wasn’t exactly one of them.
From my pre-trip research, I’d gathered that the season was one of the best in terms of raw bird numbers over the past decade or so, and my initial impressions certainly corroborated that information. There were birds as far as the eye could see, opening up tons of opportunities to showcase some of the park’s landscape in a slightly different light.
This series is going to be less narrative-focused than usual. I want to really delve into the technical, artistic, and practical challenges of each image this time around. Let’s get right into it!
Challenges.
The previous evening, I had scouted out a set of nesting sites which I thought would work well as silhouettes. As is usually the case when shooting massive bird colonies, I was faced with the choice of either zooming all the way in to focus on an individual bird, or taking a step back to focus on the bigger picture.
In this case, I tried to achieve a middle-ground by using a mid-telephoto focal length. My rationale in the field was quite simple – a long lens exaggerated the bushy structure of the trees, while a wider focal length didn’t allow me to isolate the Painted Storks and their nests enough to make them stand out against the surrounding landscape.
My decision-making was also influenced by how much sky I was willing to include in the shot. Apart from the sun, there were very few interesting elements (eg. textures, birds, or colours) present in the scene to justify including a ton of space at the top of the frame. In the end, I decided to include just enough sky to balance against the textures of the trees in the lower-half of the scene.
I walked around the main path as the sun rose, looking for even just the tiniest window to shoot these birds through. The mist was quickly dissipating and I had no time to spare. It took me about 15 minutes to line up the right composition, but once I did, it was simply a matter of waiting for the action to start.
I’ve always been vocal about my apprehensions when it comes to incorporating multiple birds in a single frame. It throws a lot of uncontrollables into the mix – something I don’t find particularly enjoyable. I prefer having control over every single aspect of an image. Variability is one of the key aspects of bird photography, sure, but I try to simplify that equation whenever possible.
I shot a series of bursts (around 300-400 images), and I managed to capture exactly two frames where one of the Painted Storks was silhouetted perfectly against the rising sun. Unfortunately, however, the third stork from the left had a slightly awkward head position in the image I liked the most. I’m no stranger to merging two frames to achieve the best head/body positions, and that’s exactly what I decided to do this time. The third stork had a decent head angle in a couple of frames prior to the one I’ve shared above so I decided to transplant that into this shot.
In terms of ethics, it’s a practice I’m quite comfortable with. The two images I blended were part of the same series, after all, and were shot seconds apart. I don’t think it misrepresents reality in any way but, of course, it definitely depends on personal preference.
On that note, I hope you enjoyed the first instalment in this mini-series! I’ve got a few more images I’d like to discuss in-depth, and I’ll do my best to post them over the next couple of weeks or so. Thanks as always for taking the time to read this blog post!