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Caspian terns are one of my favorite birds, but I seldom get an opportunity to photograph them under optimal conditions. Such an opportunity presented itself around 5:00pm Saturday (6/15) when the terns made a rare daylight, close up appearance diving for fish in Puget Sound off Sunset Ave. in Edmonds, WA.
While this may seem like a lot of photos, I deleted several hundred others.
You are the master of these shots, Bill. I was there later in the evening and they were also flying close, but the sun angle was just horrible. I was tempted to get out the 500 but decided not to because of the lighting.
Saturday I was extremely fortunate to have a combination of good light + the terns diving fairly close to the shore. The light was not as good Sunday (6/16) near sunset and the terns were farther out.
This tern looked very pretty against the background of the west side of Puget Sound.
If the terns are making a habit of diving at this particular spot close to sunset, I'll try to get down the the jetty at Brackett's Landing and get photos viewing them from the opposite direction.
You are correct about my shooting in burst mode. I was using a shutter speed of 1/1000, which is my basic default shutter setting. Terns, osprey, and eagles glide more than they flap, so it is not necessary to use a very fast shutter speed to freeze the wings.
Monday evening (7/1) I was up on Sunset Ave. to photograph the sunset when some noisy terns flew in to fish. Terry assures me they sound like pterodactyls.
I had the 5D Mk III + 24-105L zoom mounted on a tripod in order to use the camera's HDR mode for the sunset shots, so I used the 7D + 100-400L zoom hand held to photograph the terns. I knew it was too dark and the terns were too far away for good dive sequences, so I tried to get shots of the terns the terns against the background of the Olympic Mountains,
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