Angel Wings

Angel Wings

 

The Chobe river is teeming with wildlife, especially birds. It was such a fantastic experience to drift through this mighty river aboard a small boat, observing the wildlife diversity and trying to immortalise it in photos. At one point we came across part of a riverbank where some African Skimmers were landing and taking off. They are such graceful birds with very long and beautiful wings. I was looking to for a way to capture the beautiful lines of the wings in a photo and I got the perfect opportunity to do so when one was just landing onto the riverbank.

The typical photo one wants to get is of them “skimming” – flying very close to the water with the bottom part of their bill skimming the water. Sadly the opportunity to do that didn’t materialise for me as it was always happening a tad too far! But in wildlife photography one always must have a plan B, C etc as the animals are not studio models performing to our bidding! There are so many facets that one can try to photograph and it’s important to always observe and find interesting facets to capture.

Techs: Canon 5D Mk III | Canon 200-400 f4L with 1.4 Extender @ 560mm | f5.6 | 1/4000s | ISO 800.