Critique Photographing flocks of birds...advice / c&c please

[whyone]

On an early morning walk recently I came across groups of Common Terns and Black Skimmers gathering on the shoreline of a beach in SW Florida.

I positioned sat with the sun to my back and periodically the birds would take flight.

I'm sure there is an effective way to photograph birds in this situation, but I'm not sure I found it!

Most images cropped a somewhat to (what I believe) suited the photo.

(Mainly) Common Terns (mainly!) at rest:


The chaos of the birds taking flight:






Calm again!

 

[sk66]

The first two images are just a bunch of bird butts... not generally going to be an interesting image. Maybe if there was one in the flock that was looking back and you focused on it. The third image is just kind of in-between... there's not enough of a flock for it to be the focus of an image, so it doesn't have a focus/subject perse.

IMO, there just aren't many times where a flock makes a good subject... you usually need to find a subject within the flock to focus on/emphasise.

 

[whyone]

Yep, thank you @sk66, you confirm my doubts about the he images....and the difficulty of taking a good image in these situations.

 

[rd6743]

I think there's potential for shots like the 4th one. Where the flock is in flight, but think it's a case of having enough birds but not too many so that they aren't all overlapping each other; appreciate we have no real control over this. Just my 'umble opinion.