I like to end the work week with either a felid or another beast, and this is a nice one. Sometimes even The Daily Fail has some good stuff. This is one of them:
A photographer who used to watch kingfishers as a boy with his grandfather spent six years and took 720,000 photos trying to get the perfect shot of the bird in memory of his late relative.
Alan McFadyen, 46, was taken by his grandfather Robert Murray to see the kingfisher nesting spot at the beautiful lakeside location near Kirkcudbright, Scotland, 40 years ago.
As he grew up, Mr McFadyen never forgot his boyhood visits and so when he took up photography six years ago, he decided to make the spot the focus of his attention, taking hundreds of photos per day trying to capture a kingfisher’s flawless dive.
To me, this is the money shot, but there are other great ones below:
Since the kingfisher nest was flooded each year by the tidal water, Mr McFadyen dug a hole in the bank and filled it with clay to make a more sustainable nest for the birds.
For six long years, Mr McFadyen returned a few times a week – averaging 100 days a year – to photograph the kingfishers as they dived into the lake.
The father-of-three clocked up more than 4,200 hours and took around 720,000 photos before he got the perfect shot of the kingfisher doing a flawless dive into the water, without even a splash.
Mr McFadyen, from the Dumfries and Galloway area of Scotland, said: ‘There are not many people in the world who have got this shot. Kingfishers dive so fast they are like bullets so taking a good photo requires a lot of luck – and a lot of patience.
‘The photo I was going for of the perfect dive, flawlessly straight, with no splash required not only me to be in the right place and get a very lucky shot but also for the bird itself to get it perfect.
Visiting twice a day, about 100 days a year, Mr McFadyen would usually shoot around 600 pictures per session. Over the six years, he believes he accumulated around 720,000 pictures – but felt only a small fraction were any good.
Mr McFadyen said: ‘As a small boy of about six I remember my grandfather taking me to see the kingfisher nest and I just remember being completely blown away by how magnificent the birds are.
Despite getting his ‘perfect’ picture, Mr McFadyen does not intend to stop photographing kingfishers any time soon.
Mr McFadyen said: ‘Just because I have now got this shot, I’m never going to stop going to this spot and snapping the kingfishers. It’s a very relaxing place and I just love it. But I’m not sure how I can ever beat this picture.
‘I have already started taking my eight-year-old son Leighton along with me and he spotted a kingfisher for the first time just last week so my dream is for him to take it up too.’
h/t: Moto, Hempenstein
Stunning photographs of a glorious bird. The “money shot” is as close to perfect as it gets!
All I can say about those kingfisher pics is: fab-u-lous!! 🙂
These lovely shits flittered through my Facebook feed a few days ago. I marveled then and enjoy seeing them surface on here.
Oh dear me!! I many shots!
I give up on typing.
Time for a nap in the sun.
I don’t know, that sort of works.
Beautiful.
It reminds me of the startling pictures of bullets and golf swings shot by Doc Edgerton.
Why evolution is beautiful.
Utterly wonderful kingfisher shots !
Freeking heck, those are some shots, extraordinary.
Private fishing? not anymore.
Nice job.
Most excellent indeed.
Wow!! Those are awesome! Great job, and congratulations!
Breathtaking! Thanks!
As a budding photographer who has taken hundreds of pictures of bees in flight (but with lesser equipment) I can somewhat relate to what the whole endeavor is like. I only consider a few of my pictures to be barely adequate and I doubt that I will substantially improve on them. But am I even thinking of quitting? Don’t be silly. It’s the pursuit, not the prize.
Brilliant! Thank you for your perseverance!
If this was before digital days, how much film would that be. Usually 24 shots to a roll so about 30,000 rolls of film. $$$$
Serious money, it’s sure. But to be honest, if you were setting out to get the “money shot”, you’d use a cine camera with a short start-up time. And you’d set up an underwater (invisible – hidden by the reflections) fish dispenser and train the kingfishers.
Sorry, not dissing the man’s dedication to his shot. Just working out how a professional cameraman tasked with getting that “money shot” would have got the money at a low enough cost to make a living.
For some people, “the perfect picture” would include the provision that nothing was done to interfere with the bird’s natural behavior.
OTOH, it’s important, if disillusioning, to be aware of how much tomfoolery often goes into the capturing of those “perfect shots.” Add in post-processing and it can make one permanently suspicious of all “perfect” shots.
“Posing” shots is, literally, as old as photography. Probably “Ugh” and “Urghu” had disputes about the ethics of turning the horse’s head *this* way when painting Lascaux.
In the world of nature photography many consider baiting to be unethical.
Yes. And many don’t.
Stunning pictures and what a nice story! I especially like it when hard work like his pays off with a perfect shot. Nowadays, with digital cameras everywhere, even a one-in-a-million shot comes out by pure accident every day somewhere in the world, and we get overdosed with amazing pictures. But this is in another category….
WOW! They’re all wonderful but I think my fave would be one or the other of the two emergent shots, fish in bill. They really capture the little guy’s personality somehow.
I can hear Stephen Barnard’s competitive juices starting to flow…
I’m cursed with Belted Kingfishers that are, hands down, the spookiest, most difficult in-flight birds to photograph I’ve ever seen, and that includes swallows. I often see in photography-sharing groups great action photographs of European, Asian, and who-knows-where kingfisher species that could NEVER be captured with a Belted Kingfisher. The probability of doing so is right up there with finding a Boltzman brain on your doorstep. (They’re apparently a diverse genus.) What makes it worse is that I see them nearly every day, and that their call is an annoyingly mocking sound. They’re also perhaps the drabbest species in an otherwise colorful group.
By the way, 720,000 is well over the shutter-count durability spec of any DSLR. On my Canon 5D3 (a high end camera) it’s 400,000.
Years ago, back in the days of film, I tried to photograph the Belted Kingfisher too. I finally did manage an acceptable shot by setting up a blind and an array of flashes outside the entrance to its nest tunnel (at a discrete distance). But it wasn’t an artful photo.
I have some in-flight shots, but they’re either blurry or drastically cropped.
I used four Vivitar 285 flashes set at 1/4 power, so their flash duration was very short, short enough to stop flying bird motion. I had very good luck with that technique.
Yes, Belted is the one we have out here–Michigan–too. Pretty much all you’ll see in the US unless you’re in south Texas or far south Arizona. (But stay put–those species may be coming through any year now…)
One thing I like about the kingfishers is their tendency to hover–a hovering bird is about the only BIF I’m sure to catch!
They breed at a fish hatchery complex (duh!) near us that has several ponds, few of which have much surrounding vegetation making it durned difficult to sneak up on the KF’s. A couple of years ago in August though I came across a family group (male, female, 2 juveniles, IIRC), and as the adults were fully focused on feeding & teaching the kids I was able to get, uh, better than usual shots. Great looks at perched birds, but the BIF’s were still a bitc*. You no doubt know of nests around your area; have you caught them fledging ever?
Did not realize there was a shutter durability stat. Well, what’s a cam or two to a fellow this obsessed? 😀
sub
I started my photo planning above before reading your frustration.
An underwater minnow-dispenser? Would a length of garden hose, a small bucket of minnows, a funnel, and a bucket of flushing water do the job? Flush a minnow into the hose and out to the “killing ground” (where things get shot), creating enough current to alert the bird ; bird is coming in and you put the camera into full auto. “dagga dagga dagga”
You’d need to train your actors, and set up your lighting (including external power for the strobes) …
Sound workable?
It wouldn’t work. There are too many naturally occurring prey. It’s also illegal to introduce fish into these waters. I just watched a Belted Kingfisher fly by at approximately mach 3. I also saw a Eurasian Collared Dove attack a kestrel. These large non-native doves are not birds of peace.
Well, to steal a phrase from somewhere, “know thine enemy.” I’m sure you’d be able to think up a way of getting a Belted Kingfisher to dive into the water at a point of your choosing. At which point, it becomes a matter of a few days of good weather and perseverance.
I did have to look this up because this Kingfisher looks quite different from the ones I’ve seen in the Midwest. With 90 different species I can understand.
Guessing this is the Common Kingfisher(Alcedo atthis). Here I believe is the Belted Kingfisher(Megaceryle Alcyon) and I have not seen any for several years.
Superb. And emphasises the difficulty of true nature photography.
Absolutely stunning and a great tribute to someone who was clearly a much loved inspiration.
What warms the heart of this sometimes photography teacher is that Mr McFadyen not only envisioned his “perfect” shot, but was not satisfied until he achieved it.
Most photographers never take the time, or it never occurs to them, to do the first part of the exercise. But it is the crucial (I think) first step of a creative journey.
The other wonderful shots he took (besides his “money shot”) are the happy by-product of that process. Most of us never achieve the perfect shot, and perhaps we are never meant to.
Perfect and very amazing….