Take Your Pic

Here are this month’s reader photos, with tips from Toast Coetzer. Send your best shots to [e-mail]

- Toast Coetzer

RENIER LE ROUX

Nikon D750

Nikon 70 – 200 mm lens

RENIER WRITES: I photographed these Cape cormorants in Strand in January. I usually take landscape photos so I wasn’t sure about the settings I should use. I did know I needed a fast shutter speed – in this case it was 1/2 000 second. The widest aperture my camera would allow at that speed was f4, ISO 100.

I later realised it would have been easier to shoot using aperture priority mode, not manual. And maybe my photo would have been sharper had I used a tripod – the birds were moving fast.

TOAST SAYS: A tripod doesn’t help much with an action photo because you need to be able to move your camera and quickly re-frame as required. Your friend in a situation like this is a really fast shutter speed, as you also noted.

It’s an unusual photo, which is why I like it. Cape cormorants are hard to photograph: Their plumage is dark so it’s tricky to see detail on their feathers; most photos of them are silhouettes in flight.

Renier’s photo was taken on an overcast day and everything is bathed in muted light. Some might say it’s too dull, but I like the mood it captures: the salty shoreline where the cormorants live, always on the move, often low over the sea as they fly around looking for food.

It’s a shame you can’t see the eyes of the birds more clearly (bright sunlight might have added extra sparkle), but the yellow gular skin adds a little character. Without that splash of colour, the birds would have looked like undertakers.

I also like how the birds fill the frame. It’s gives the impression that they’re part of a huge flock, even if we can only see five of them.

Well done, Renier, you win a camera bag.