Ready the sick bags, time for some humble pie!

While you prepare your bags, I'd like to extend my sincere thanks to everyone for their messages of support, links to sites, encouragement and guidance over the past two days. This one's for you. I love you all to bits!

Bags ready? Hahaha... No, that's not what the bags were for! Read on. Meanwhile, here's a little something to cover the rustling...

WARNING, THIS IS A MEGA RAMBLE TONIGHT!!!

I'm sorry, but I'll be playing catch up with you all again this week! I really need to get more organised!

I woke this morning the most content I've felt for a while along with a determination in my mind not to repeat the disappointment of Friday.

The contentment was due to an absolutely lovely evening in the company of my cousin and his family. Lunch turned into dinner as they had to wait for the washing machine engineer (there seems to be a lot of that going on just now). A partial wander (A. did well before "This is a bit longer than I thought. It's beginning to feel like exercise!" interrupted the walk) and a taxi up to town and into TGI Friday's for some scran. Sophie had us all in stitches with her post dinner sketching on napkins. Tears of hilarity flowed freely from K. as she pocketed the artwork for posterity. An email I got just before lights out guaranteed I went to sleep with a smile on my face...

And so it was forearmed with the knowledge I should have sought beforehand I had garnered from you lovely people and an extra spring in my step that I wandered down to Portobello beach this afternoon. Even the weather was playing nice. The sun was out a little, there wasn't the same bite in the air and the seas were a lot calmer.

I knew from the first shot that I would be able to come away with something. I still have an awful lot to learn and this shot is far from perfect (come back here birdy) but it is by far the best I took and I'm happy that I now have a solid base from which to improve.

The beach was busy today. From families out feeding the gulls (a great bait for shooting) to what must have been other blippers, some with other interests than the gulls.

If anyone is interested, you can find a few more shots with varying treatments in my folio.

I would never presume to tell anyone how to do this stuff and I'm sure a lot of this is already known to you guys, but here are my Magnificent Seven tips I learned for and from today that might be of use to someone. If anyone has any tips that they can add or amend please leave a comment. Apart from the first tip which was a Eureka! inducer, these are in no particular order.

1. By far the best piece of advice I received was to make use of the AF On button. On the sixty, this is placed just to the right of the natural resting place for your right thumb and is an easy adjustment to make use of. This button allows for control of the focus and metering functions that are normally handled by half-pressing the shutter. By selecting the AI Servo focus mode and holding down this button (which will allow for continuously updated metering and focus information), it allows your shutter finger to concentrate on taking the shot. I can't tell you how much easier it made shooting. Thanks for that tip Christine. It was a gem! If you want to see some really gorgeous images, check out her Bird in Flight and the folio links from it.

2. A rather obvious one next. Seek out your subject. On Friday when I went down to the beach, self conscious as ever, I headed along to the quiet part of the promenade. In my defence there had been a group of gulls there previously, but I spent a while just shooting the scraps that flew past my face. Today, I headed down onto the sand and generally to within a couple of hundred metres of the gulls resting on the shoreline. Surprisingly, they appeared more than just dots in the middle of the frame!

3. Concentrate on one subject at a time. Anyone experienced wildlife photographers would have laughed watching me today. I could hear David Attenborough in my head. "In this target rich environment, the young Kestrel simply doesn't know where to turn. As a result his intended prey mockingly escape his feeble hunting efforts. Looking from the sidelines, disapproving parents can only watch as time and time again he comes up empty. It's a skill the youngling must master though, if he is to survive." Hahahaha, hands up if you did the voice!

4. Leave the monopod at home. Again on Friday, I used this to steady the monster lens, but to get the fluid motion you need to track birds in flight you need to shoot handheld. Work on the guns instead!

5. Feel the need for speed. More advice from CB. She advised no less than 1/1000 sec. This was taken at 1/1250 sec. but I did go as high as 1/4000 sec. on some shots. Stay high, even if you need to increase ISO to achieve it. This was actually taken at ISO 200. A mistake I often make is thinking I always need to shoot at ISO 100 to get a quality image unless I'm looking for a particular effect. Bad me I'm learning.

6. Keep an eye on that exposure meter. This is one that will take a while to get used to but will come with experience. Most DSLR's come with an exposure display in their viewfinder and I use this all the time when shooting. I found it to be quite a tricky (and easily forgotten) aspect of shooting action, to keep a peripheral eye on this meter to continually adjust the shutter speed to keep your subject correctly exposed, making sure as well to maintain that minimum 1/1000 sec. speed and keep it in frame. It is however, made easier by the use of the AF On button since your forefinger is free to wander from the shutter to the speed dial momentarily without losing the ability to retain focus. I told you that was a top tip!

7. Light. Good light is essential, especially when shooting gulls. Grey sky makes it difficult to effectively meter (or that might just be me). I stuck with evaluative metering today, but for future shoots I might try spot metering instead.

The last point isn't mine. It comes from a couple of excellent articles (Part One and Part Two) I read from Bill Horn on the topic.

One final thought... Persistence!
Even after you become a consummate flight shooter and fully understand and use all the technical features described above, there is still no guarantee you will get fantastic images. Having the tools is all too often not quite enough. Persistence will get you there.

Didn't you guys already tell me that? ;- )