Sanderling
captured by D5 / 800mm / Panning Plate
There is NO one way to work with wildlife, this is especially true with birds! There are many paths to success so then the way to find your path should include the fun factor. When you include that, then lying on the beach has to be one of the best techniques (Kelby class on the technique). We’re working with birds about the size of your fist darting about a world that is full of visual distraction. To make them visibly pop, we need to either make them larger in the frame or remove the visual distractions. Getting down on their level accomplished both with a lot of fun mixed in. Here’s a video showing you the technique in action a few days ago.
The video was shot with the new Nikon KeyMission 360. It was attached to a flash arm over the 800mm lens. It’s a 4k video (be sure to set it to 4k when viewing) resized down from 2.1Gb to 524MB to upload quickly to YouTube. Clicking on the arrow in the top left corner or dragging the hand around in the frame, you can see how we’re shooting in 360 degrees using the Panning Plate from the surf. You can see it all which might help you work with this killer technique!