Little Things That Stretch Our Limits

Barn Swallow

Behind the camera.

It’s good to push yourself, stretch your abilities, and try the seemingly impossible. That is the story of this photograph. This is a barn swallow. It’s one of hundreds that were flying about, darting in and out of the building that I had come to photograph on this trip.

To get a feeling of this challenge, go to a baseball game and try to photograph a curve ball thrown from pitcher to catcher and get a clear, sharp image. Well, these birds are about the size of a baseball, and they dart around extremely fast. I sat and observed to see if there was a flight pattern that would help me predict how they would fly, but I couldn’t observe any sort of pattern.

After an hour of just observing, I realized the swallows were hunting. They were catching flying insects and darting about to snatch other flying things out of the air. So, that added to the fascination and the challenge to photograph the birds.

I had come to this place in search of an old church building. A photo of the building was posted on Facebook. Directions were vague. I knew that it was in Phillips County, Kansas and somewhere north of the small town of Agra. Agra is a 5-1/2 hour drive from my home in southeast Kansas. The town is less that 15 miles from the Nebraska border. However, the photo showed the church deteriorating and I knew that it would not be around in the future. So, it was a mission to photograph the church. I hoped to photograph a sunset and the Milky Way extending over the old building.

The local farmer who owns the land where the church is located, was working his fields. I spoke with him and with his permission, stayed the night to take photos. When I sat up my gear inside the building, I discovered at least twenty barn swallow nests along the ceiling. There was stillness interrupted by a flurry of swallows flying through the window openings. They were bringing their insects to feed the young in the nests.

The swallows fly around checking me out, but soon they realized that I was no threat and they ignored my presence. It was fascinating to watch them through the evening.

I returned outside to sit and watch and try to photograph these little darts. It was a challenge to just acquire the birds in the camera’s viewfinder. Tracking a bird long enough to take the photo was another level of difficulty. Then to get a photograph with the right lighting, distance, and stability was nearly impossible. However, persistence pays off sometimes. Out of forty-five photographs that I took that evening, this one is worth sharing. It isn’t perfect, but it feels like success.

Geek speak.

If you read the story of this photograph, you know this was a challenging experience. I was using my Sony 200-600mm, f/5.6-6.3 G lens on a Sony a6700 camera. With the focal length set to 350mmm and the aperture at f/6.3, I could set the shutter speed to 1/3200 of a second to freeze the motion of the birds and still have enough light exposure to get the details. All that I needed was for a bird to fly toward me at the right height.

As I wrote earlier, I took forty-five photos that evening. Some only captured part of a bird as it suddenly darted out of the frame. Some were flying away and were just uninteresting. Others were too far or too near or flying into the setting sun. However, this one was just right. Flying about 30 feet away, it was curious about what I was doing and turned to fly over my head. As he did, I got this photograph. It isn’t perfect, but I had been pushed to use my limited photography skills. It certainly stretched my abilities. And I had captured what seemed at first to be impossible. I hope you enjoy it.