And it becomes critically important when photographing birds who have Whites in the range. It is always a good idea to cross check the color range that your subject is exposing you to. I had set it to a value of 320, which allowed me to not lose the details in the white and at the same time not underexpose the blacks. Given the shutter speed and Aperture that I wanted I was not left with much choice on ISO part. To do that I had set my aperture to an f value of 9.0. To overcome this, it is always a good idea to select a narrow aperture to get more of the bird in focus. But it is easy to miss out on focus at the right place. Compared to smaller birds, tracking and composing gets easier with larger birds. One plus point about Photographing large birds is, it is easy to fill the frame. This was also due to the fact that I had set my camera to a crop mode which gave me an equivalent focal length of 900 mm which is 1.5 x crop factor. So, I chose to set my shutter speed of 1/1600 sec. They say, in birding things can drastically change just at the drop of a hat. But, while Photographing birds, though I was trying to shoot birds sunbathing who are not moving much, still you must be ready for an unpredictable action. The rule of thumb is to have at least a shutter speed of 1/focal length to avoid any camera shake. When photographing with a long lens, you cannot be more watchful about your shutter speed. This not only makes the scene look interesting and compelling, but also allows you to make your subject look majestic and powerful. A busy background will only distract your image look clumsy and lose focus from your main subject, unless done creatively to showcase the habitat.Īnother thing worth mentioning is, when it comes to Photographing birds, I prefer a low angle shot which our eyes are not used to of. Next would be to take care of the background. It is always a good idea when photographing birds, that we look out for ways to create some separation between the birds when you have more than one bird in the scene. Thankfully, now there were no unwanted distractions. This crawling game continued for the next 15 minutes. I would click a few shots while being on my knees and then step forward without making sudden movements. They must be still about 150 meters away from where I was. There were Juveniles, Females, colorful Males, few Gulls, and of course lots and lots of crows. So the birds had flown further away and now the Gulls were beyond my reach, but Brahminy Kites were still in my range. And what surprised me the most was his next statement, “What difference does it make if they flew away, they will come back.” For him it was all fun, I just gave up on him. I totally lost my cool and walked to the person and asked him why did he do that? And his response was, “He wanted a closer shot”.

Before I could respond, he had already finished the game before it could begin. And there was hardly anything I could do about it. But to my surprise, an overly enthusiastic mobile Photographer ran for the birds to get a closer shot. Soon I found myself crawling with my big lens Sony 200-600 mm. I took my position and started framing the scene staying low. I took out my gear which is always ready for photographing birds and started evaluating the scene. The busy shoreline, with the birds doing their usual business at the beach, must be just about 200 meters away from the road where I parked my Car. When we reached the spot, I saw Sea Gulls and Brahminy Kites sunbathing at the beach. Just a note though, not recommended between 10:00 am to 03:00 pm, as it gets really-really hot. Perhaps you can decide based on the time of the day you reach, if you want to photograph the beach birds there. Now it’s up to you, which side you want to go. Every stop that you make in the Danushkodi road, gives you two options, a beach on the left and a beach on the right. If you have the luxury of driving in Danushkodi, do not miss it. The road running straight like an arrow cutting the Ocean into two halves was quite a sight. We were thrilled by the beauty this place had to offer. This was our third visit back to back to this mystical place called Dhanushkodi, from our 3-day trip to Rameshwaram, in the month of November 2022.

Photo male brahminy kite