Cleared For Take-Off

There are going to be lots of photographs in this update.  As in more than 20.  I took this photographs earlier this Spring.  I got a call from my brother telling me that there were thousands of geese in the Chambly Basin, just waiting to be photographed.  I got there early in the morning and sure enough, the water was covered.  I tried to photograph them as they would take flight.  I even kind of learned to know when a group was about to take off by the sounds that they would make.  Sadly, I found myself on the wrong side of the basin and the majority of my shots were overexposed from the sun.  I still took several photos, but had packed up my gear and began walking back to car when I noticed that the lens cap for my telephoto lens was missing.  I slowly began to retrace my steps back to where I was and on my second trip, I found it laying in the grass.  I was so happy that I almost missed the group of four geese that were swimming almost next to me.  I unpacked my camera as fast and quietly as possible, but still missed the first two take flight.  I did manage to catch the final two as they took-off for the day so I'll try and present to you here what I guess would make a cool flip-book of the geese in action.  The first shot on this page was taken at f/5.6, 1/640sec, ISO 100 at 300mm.  All of the following photographs were taken at f/5.6, 1/800sec, ISO 100 at 300mm.

Are there any brave souls still there?  If you scroll down the screen fast enough, you can kind of get the feel of movement, though it obviously would look better if they were printed out and displayed as a flip book.  I took these photos using the continuous shooting mode, which on my camera is about 5 frames per second.  I waited for the familiar sound I had learned from watching the other birds take flight and began shooting as soon as the birds began to move.  I'm sure the photos would look better is the geese were looking at me, but I still like the angle I ended up getting and I really like the shots of the birds as they're running on the water.  It was a fun morning of bird watching, and I really like the action in these shots.