A Day with the Falconer
A few months ago, I started watching the popular Hulu series Shogun. My interest in the show was an obvious match stemming from my recent trip to Tokyo, and with my casual studying of the Japanese language.
Halfway through the series, I started reading the book (of course I did). One of the elements that the book emphasizes a bit more is the role falconry played in ancient Japanese culture. After doing a bit of research and learning more, the algorithm decided it was time to introduce me to The Falconer.
I’ll be the first to admit — my knowledge of falconry was quite limited before my trip to The Falconer, located just outside of Seattle. My knowledge was the basic sum of stereotypical assumptions, such as the assumption that all the birds are prisoners against their will, are starved to stay obedient, and are primarily only for show.
With that being said, it didn’t take long for me to realize that these assumptions were far from the truth. I’m not an expert, so I’ll avoid any absolutes, but my visit left me interested in learning more while I was left to work through my old biases.
I was very impressed with the amount of patience and meticulous care were required to keep the birds in good health, with a balanced diet. Not only that, but I actually think they all ate better than I did.
I was also impressed to learn that falconry is not a hobby — it is a lifestyle that requires 100% commitment to your craft. Everything you do is in service to the falcons. To say you have to love the craft and be dedicated to it is an understatement — you have to be willing to give it everything you got.
But we are not here to debate the ethics or assumptions of falconry. I’m here to share my experience in hopes to shed some positive light and insight into the craft of falconry. But if you are interested to learning more, I am sure you will be enlightened to learn more about the species and habitat conservation of the trade.
I missed the opportunity to go last year, so I earmarked the Eventbrite listing the next time the opportunity came around. That notification happened to get pushed to my phone as I was on a comforting Japanese toilet at a nice café in Tokyo (more on that some other time).
I booked the experience which was a few months out and the fee was around $120 for a 2-4 hour event time. The advertised purpose was focused on photography and education on various birds of prey with opportunities to get up close, and capture birds in flight. Additionally, collaborating with other photographers on how to best prepare and manage equipment settings was a welcomed bonus.
In my experience, the more I can prepare and get “reps in” impacts my progression significantly with any self-developing skill. There are no short-cuts, but any opportunity I can take to progress quicker helps me discover my potential, barriers, and identify future areas of focus.
My motivation was to get some focused practice and insight, so that when the opportunities occur in the field, I was confident with a game plan on how to get the best pictures possible.
The Visit
Arriving at these types of events always gives me a bit of anxiety. I’m not sure what to expect, how the people will be, how much of a noob or a pro I will feel. Thankfully, everybody was great — they were all a bunch of middle-aged photography nerds just like me.
After some basic introductions, we jumped right into it. The routine was simple — bring out a falcon, see what their mood is like, and then fly them around a bit with a feeding etc… During this routine, the photographers (about eight or so) would line up and take photos while the bird was in flight, taking off, or landing. Getting photos of all three phases is quite complex, so you have to commit a bit to what type of photo you want.
Each falcon was out for roughly 20–30 minutes… some would fly… others would just chill and look spectacular. The personality and mood was quite different for each falcon. I’ve never been this close to birds of prey for any extended time, but seeing a personality in the birds was fascinating to watch.
The day wrapped up with a photo-op with an owl, which was pretty remarkable if you ask me. I wasn’t excited at all.
Camera Stuff
There are a few takeaways that I would like to share for anybody in a similar place compared to my journey. These tips will help you get the most out of birds in flight photography while developing the intuition and muscle memory needed when you are out in the field.
Keep in mind that I am sharing my experience so far — apply my advice at your discretion and adjust to get the desired results!
Shutter Speed
When shooting with any telephoto lens, understanding shutter speed is critical to getting sharp results. For smaller or faster birds, start with 1/2000s to 1/4000s and see what works best.
For larger birds, a shutter speed of 1/1000s to 1/2000s should suffice. You can even drop to 1/800s depending on how big and slow the bird is, such as wings in motion, etc.
Lighting Conditions / ISO
Once you are comfortable with the desired shutter speed, work to get in as much light as possible. This means shooting as wide as possible (e.g., f/2.8 aperture). Your goal is to capture the bird, not the total environment (unless that is your goal), so the more wide open your lens is, the better.
Auto ISO is also a fantastic resource to leverage so you do not have to think about it. For my settings, I would shoot in manual mode, aperture wide open, auto ISO, and then control the shutter speed with my thumb, so I could quickly adjust. My goal was to use the slowest shutter speed possible, so my ISO would be as low as possible.
However, the critical mistake I made on this day was not shooting fast enough. It is better to get a sharp photo over a noisy photo, since that can be cleaned up in post. Don’t make the mistake I did by trying to lower the shutter speed too much. I got several right, and I got several wrong. Either way, a valuable and practical lesson.
Focus Mode
Depending on your camera, you are going to want to go with a “continuous focus mode” instead of a single focus setting. In addition to continuous focusing, “auto-tracking” is HUGE. Once I started using this on my Sony A1, I started to get much better images. Before, I was using a focus zone and trying to get focus then shoot, focus then shoot, focus then shoot… a miserable experience.
Lean on your camera’s strengths and get used to tracking. While this doesn’t apply to all scenarios, I find that I use it the majority of the time if I am shooting birds.
Focal Length
Shoot with the edit in mind… use whatever focal length helps you capture the best photo. If you are zoomed too far in, you might lose the subject. The best way to practice that worked for me was zooming in once I had the subject in the frame, capturing focus, and then tracking as best as I could.
A lot of this really depends on your distance to the subject. The closer they are to you, the more movement and motion is required for you to track the subject. This can take a lot of practice, so get at it by taking photos of more common birds like ducks, crows, etc.
Eventually, you will be pretty dialed in, able to shoot with both eyes open at times, and work with fixed focal lengths that have zero forgiveness like a zoom lens.
Shooting Speed
Depending on your camera model, you will want to decide your desired shooting speed. For example, some models allow you to choose between “Hi+”, “Hi”, “Mid”, “Lo”, etc. The higher the setting, the more photos you can take per second. This is awesome when you want to blast a TON of photos for any sequence.
The downside is, you can fill up your memory super fast. In addition, not all memory cards are quick either. I bought a few TOUGH CFexpress Type A Cards. They almost cost about $800 for two, but they can write super fast! A read speed up to 800 MB/s and a write speed up to 700 MB/s.
All this means is the memory card won’t slow you down. This comes at a serious cost, though, so my advice is to use what you have until you learn the limits of your camera's shooting and write speed, and then decide what investment you will make.
Here is a quick way to test this out:
Format a media card so it is empty — you are not going to save anything for this test.
Set your camera to its fastest setting, pick a high shutter speed, auto ISO, and then let it rip.
Don’t stop until the camera slows you down. You will know this because you won’t be able to take any more pictures.
Watch the viewfinder and see the right icons telling you how many photos are in the queue and how many are being written to the card. You are essentially trying to learn the limits of your buffer speed — how quickly your camera can temporarily store images in its internal memory (the buffer) and then transfer them to the memory card.
If you hit the buffer too quickly or have to wait a while, then it might be time to upgrade. This is a challenging topic to resolve here, so do some research on your camera model and card combo and take it from there.
Once you are down, re-format your memory card and you are ready to go.
I hope this post was insightful and educational on your journey. Head over to my socials and say hello, I would love to hear from you!