Small birds on the fly are always a challenge - they are so rapid.

Sometimes you do manage to get a good shot, but unfortunately either the framing is poor or the background ruins the image. So hey, see if you can salvage it! Why waste an otherwise good image?

Here, the bird is in the clear, but I had to crop the image lengthwise to work around distracting branches. Believe me, there is no law that says an image has to be in a standard format size, for example 8 x 10.

Framing vertically or horizontally is often quite pleasing. Also, people often have off-standard spaces on their walls which are suited to this type of framing/formatting.

Canon 40D with 400 5.6L lens @ 1/800, f5.6, ISO 400, + 1/3 exposure compensation.

Cheers,

Mike