Late December 2006 I was photographing birds at the Gilbert Water Ranch when I happened to watch some Yellow-rumped Warblers feeding on flying gnats just before sundown. I ambled over with my 500mm lens and tried to catch a few warblers feeding on the gnats on-the-fly. There was just no way I could follow the twisting and turning warblers with that 500mm lens! Not one to give up easily, I returned on 01 January 2007 with my 300mm lens + 1.4x teleconverter to see what I could capture.

First of all, I had to leave plenty of room in the frame just to follow the warblers. I can't imagine trying to get full-frame images of these birds on the fly! The following images are 25% crops of the full-frame image, at best. Second of all, it takes a really fast shutter speed to even come close to stopping the action. Lastly, the gnats came out in large numbers just before sunset so I had to really crank up the ISO to maintain high enough shutter speeds. None of this is conducive to high quality imagery! Nonetheless, as long as I keep my final images small, perform careful sharpening, and use Noise Ninja liberally, the images are reasonably presentable. Most important of all, however, is I had a lot of fun shooting these images, not to mention the entertainment I provided a friend, Brendon Grice, as he watched me make these images! :)