Some amazing bird photography!

Photographer Roy Hancliff has taken some extraordinary pictures of birds. The Daily Mail reports:

These birds would normally be gone in a flash but British wildlife lover Roy Hancliff has frozen them in time at an astonishing 1/8000th of a second using a home-made photography set he built in his garden.




. . .

To capture every intricate movement on camera the shutter is opened and closed 250 times faster than a person can blink.

And hidden from the winged creatures in the back garden of his log cabin in British Columbia, Canada, he polishes the process by firing five flashes simultaneously at an even more impressive 20,000th of a second.




To highlight the birds, he paints his own coloured backgrounds by hand and sets them behind the birds' feeding area.

By doing this he removes the 'clutter' of the trees and plants in his garden and makes sure the birds really stand out for the viewer.




Mr Hancliff said: 'When I take the shot its so quick I don't see it. Our eyes simply aren't fast enough to register all the action that is happening right in your own back garden.

'It's only afterwards when I check what I have that I know what images I've got. You really have no idea of what you are getting until you review the pictures later.




'I'm stunned by the beauty of a regular bird you see all the time suddenly looking very different when it's frozen in time.

'I've managed to document behaviour that you just can't see without technology to help you.

'People are really shocked when they look at my photos, because it shows those moments they never get to see normally.'

There's more at the link, including many photographs. Mr. Hancliff also has a superb Flickr photostream, from which all the images shown above were drawn (and reduced in size, to fit this blog). I only chose a few of his images, in order to remain within the 'Fair Use' provisions of US copyright law. The rest of his Flickr photostream makes fascinating viewing.

Peter