Sandwich Terns

In Texel, I was advised to shoot a Sandwich Tern colony in the evening using front-lighting, but I'd much rather go for back-lighting at dawn. I have great memories of 16 years ago, when shooting Arctic Terns in Finnmark (the northern-most part of Norway) with reddish back-lighting. It was tempting to try this again. I mounted my Nikon 600/4.0 VR with 1.4X tele-extender near the colony 15 minutes before sunrise. I don't use tele-extenders very often, but in this case distance was a factor and it worked out great. Again, my preferred camera is the Nikon D3S, an excellent tool in difficult, low light situations using high ISOs.

The sunrise was just as I had hoped, directly behind the Sandwich Tern colony and I had wonderful light for about 30 minutes, and I set the white balance at 6800K to preserve the reddish hue of the light. I also had many opportunities for panning the birds at 1/80 – 1/160 second shutter speeds.

After an intense hour of in-flight photography, clouds arrived, and a light rain started. This was perfect since I now had soft lighting for the rest of the morning, and I could shoot more birds like the Godwits.

Nikon D3S with 600/4.0 + 1,4X Extender, 1/400 sec, f/5.6 and ISO 1600

Nikon D3S with 600/4.0 + 1,4X Extender, 1/250 sec, f/5.6 and ISO 2000

Nikon D3S with 600/4.0 + 1,4X Extender, 1/80 sec, f/10 and ISO 1600

Nikon D3S with 600/4.0 + 1,4X Extender,  1/160 sec, f/5,6 and ISO 1000

OJL

This post is also available in: Norwegian Bokmål