Me and My Shadow....

This was Day 2 of the Midge Challenge in which I am trying to capture midges in flight. I tried again at the river this time using a 70-200mm zoom lens using autofocus to get focus on the water and then changing to manual focus and just pulling back a tiny bit as the midges are buzzing around just above the water. I had cranked up the ISO and today was as bright and sunny as I am ever going to get but even so I am not sure, giving myself a reasonable depth of field (f16), that I am getting shutter speeds that are sufficiently high to stop the midges in mid-flight. Still I did get some images where it was evident where the midges were and you could clearly see the wing and body shape.

Unfortunately I did not have yesterday's luck in seeing any big birds on the beach and those that I could see were quite far away. I photographed some jackdaws fighting way over by the bridge and though they were sharp you were not getting the feather detail. This jackdaw was much closer to me and I noted its strong shadow. Its mate flew off but away from me so although I managed to latch on to it, the bird was not particularly interesting as you could only see its wings and backside. All-in-all a day of lost opportuities so this will have to suffice.