Over the course of prepping for tonight's talk (details HERE) about Ohio's macro habitats and the conservation thereof, I dipped deep into the archives and ran across lots of imagery I hadn't looked at for a while or posted. Here's one.

A Common Tern (Sterna hirundo) whirls around on a dime after spotting a school of emerald shiners or some other fishy food source. Terns are consummate aeronauts, and woe to the fishes that they clap eyes on. This bird was over Lake Erie, near Toledo in Lucas County, Ohio, on May 10, 2022.

PHOTO NOTE: Terns are fairly low-hanging fruit, insofar as aerial imagery goes. While they can be swift, hunting terns are pretty predictable in their movements and thus easier to track. Modern gear makes such shots far easier, too. I used my favorite BIF (Birds In Flight) gear for this image: the Canon R5, and Canon's ultralight 400mm DO f/4 II lens, with the Canon 1.4x teleconverter, version II. That equates to 560mm, and the range between 400mm and 560mm is just about perfect for quickly locking on and tracking BIF with a handheld setup. I use back-button focus exclusively, and each of my camera's three back buttons, which are easily accessible with my right thumb, are programmed to different focus settings. I used the all points active/eye recognition program, which is magical in its ability to find eyes and keep the focus precisely on an eye. In animal photography, you always want the eye to be sharp. All I have to do is keep the subject in the field of view and try to be positioned where the light is best.

Settings were f/8 at 1/2500 second. If light permits, I like to be stopped down to f/8 or even more, to get more sharpness throughout the subject, particularly when a blank, non-distractive background is present (like this blue sky). 1/2500 is plenty fast enough to mostly freeze a tern, although hummingbirds and some other subjects might necessitate even faster speeds. The ISO was at 500, but I very rarely set ISO to a specific value when shooting birds. There is no good reason that I can think of to do so. I let the ISO float, but keep a close eye on it, which is easy as the ISO speed displays live time in my viewfinder. If it starts increasing to a point of undesirability, such as ISO 2500 or more, if possible, I rein it in by slowing the shutter speed or opening the lens up more, or a combination thereof.