A visitor called Mark contacted us recently and sent us one of the pictures he took at S.O.S. on a visit during the summer. It was such a good picture that we asked for more information about him and how he took it. This was his reply:
"Having recently finished an evening course in digital photography at Suffolk College I wanted to keep practising with different camera set ups and subjects. I find with having two young sons that Suffolk Owl Sanctuary is a great place to spend an afternoon with them and being able to get up close and personal with the birds is an added bonus.
We've been visiting on a regular basis this year and I always bring my camera just in case I'm able to grab a reasonable picture of some of your birds.
The picture I've sent was shot using my Canon EOS400D with a 75-300mm lens. Shutter speed was 1/800th sec to capture the bird in flight although panning the camera had added some motion blur to the wings which I feel adds to the sense of speed rather than catching the bird dead still. Depth of field was set at F5.6 to keep the clouds blurred out and the focus on the subject.
A small amount of post processing was done to remove the jesses the bird wears and to crop the bird to the centre of the picture."
It all sounds very technical but the end result is a great shot, so congratulations Mark and thanks for 'keeping us in the picture'!