My afternoon introduction to capturing birds in flight tool place at the Étang de la Galiotte. This translates to Galiotte Pond. When you visit you will see that is an understated way of describing a large mass of water in Carrières-sous-Poissy. Capturing birds in flight professionally requires specialized equipment. I need to verify that I am interested enough to make that investment. So with my existing equipment I see about capturing birds in flight.
You can see from the map the lake is quite large. The town of Carrières-sous-Poissy, which translates to Quarries under Poissy, gives a good clue to the origin of the Étang de la Galiotte. The Paris region is made up of layers of sand, limestone, mixed with various amounts of clay. Being by the river Seine transport of the quarried sand was easy. Subsequently the Étang de la Galiotte was filled with river water to make a lake.
The lake is a major feature of the new park du peuple de l’herbe which covers 113 hectares.
Today, the lake and surrounding park are the host of birds, fish and people. There is a small island in the centre to help birds nest and breed. Making it a good site for capturing birds in flight. This protected natural space hosts a village of about 30 floating homes on the southern shore of the lake. There is an active residents association.
The Yvelines region published a detailed study, in French, about steps taken to avoid the risks associated to natural disasters in the region linked to the river, the geology and other potential threats.
Now to my visit. What did I see and how did the afternoon go?
Getting There
First of all if you arrive from Paris take to the train or RER to Poissy. You can walk from the train station at Poissy. It’s a fairly level walk over the main road bridge. It will take 20 minutes, about 1.5km. If you arrive by car, then I suggest you park in the Parking du parc du peuple de l’herbe. There are several bus services which use the road bridge to get to the Poissy station. The town of Poissy has also a project to build a new footbridge (site in French) linking the station to the park.
For the less nimble on their feet, I would recommend sticking to the path that run along the river Seine, rather than those by the lake which end up as a narrow track in the woods.
Bright sunshine and water
Bright sunshine can make photography complicated. On the good side everything is brightly lit, but with that comes shadows. And the contrast can be hard to manage. Add to that water, and to a slightly lesser degree the bright blue sky, and you have bright reflections and dispersed light from the sky and water. This can make the blue sky appear grey, the beautiful water dull and opaque.
Polarization
The solution to this is a polarizing filter. You may will be familiar with polarizing sun glasses. The same filter on your objective will filter out light which is dispersed in all directions. It will leave nicely aligned light rays. The advantage that the filter has over sunglasses is that you can spin the filter to choose exactly which direction the light rays should be. This allows you to choose the blue colour for your sky and optimize the view of the water so you can see the fish etc. Unfortunately my filter was not with me on this trip.
Freezing motion
So I chose to focus on the bird-life. In June the young ducks and geese still look cute and fluffy. They become a natural subject for cute photos. There are also plenty of terns here. They fly quickly over the water’s surface before diving into the water to capture fish. And the fish don’t have much chance as they are so fast. This speed also makes them difficult to photograph.
Some starting steps
Time needed: 30 minutes
Capturing flying birds
- Before you go
Empty the memory card, and take the fastest card you have. It might be worth checking what file types you are storing. In general I write RAW and JPEG files to the card. Doing this means writing takes longer and uses more space. You could just save high quality JPEG for this session.
- Select objective
Use a zoom, I would say at least 135mm, preferably 210mm, or more
- Use auto-focus
Set the auto focus to AI servo. You will not be able to focus manually on the fast moving birds, use the camera’s intelligence o track them in flight
- Choose the ISO setting
Consider setting the ISO to 100, or 200, depending on the aperture of your objective. The smaller the aperture the less light will be collected and therefore a higher ISO can help.
- Set speed
In order to freeze the movement of a bird, or anything moving rapidly, set the speed to a maximum of 1/800s
- Review and modify
After your first series of photos review and adjust the settings. Too dark check the ISO and aperture. Blurred reduce the speed.
- Repeat
There will be many missed shots so just keep going
SD Card speeds
There are many sizes of SD cards, but I would suggest 32GB or 64GB. Which gives plenty of room and not a totally unmanageable volumes of photos to sort through when you get home. When the technology was launched it supported a 12.5 MB/s speed. At this speed it would take 2 seconds to write a typical RAW image. Making continuous shooting for a bird in flight impossible. The technology now supports up to 3940MB/s however not all cameras support such speeds, nor do they need them. There are 3 common ways of describing the speed that the card can transfer data.
Look for card with the U3 class. These can support up to 30 MB/s which id ample for video and photo recording. There is more information on the classes on the SD card Association website.
Good luck capturing birds in flight. If you further inspiration try this external website.
Return visit
It’s a great park and I went back in the winter. You can read about it here.
I have other posts about my visits along the River Seine, for example Spring walk along the Seine
Purchase my art
Some of my photos are available for purchase on my Adobe Stock store the link in the menu.
Or by clicking on the widget below.
