This kind of backlit goose shot is highly prized by the hundreds of wildlife photographers who gather at Bosque del Apache NWR during any given November. You see them lined up along the tour loop, a dozen at at time, with their huge white Canon 500mm, 600mm, and even 800mm lenses on tripods looking like the massed guns of a battleship (there are always a few black Nikon’s mixed in the way a few Ross’ Geese mix with a flock of Snowys). The sound of mirror’s slapping in a dozen DSLR bodies as a flock of photographers all let off on the same in-coming goose is one of the enduring aural impressions of Bosque in November. If you are standing on the edge of the road, you can actually hear it over the geese. 🙂

The thing about the backlit goose shot is, of course, the way the sun shines through the wings.

It is a shot that requires the sun at just the right angle, and the goose coming in just about straight overhead. The primary skill involved is timing (after being in the right place at the right time), and today’s cameras with fast sensors and rapid capture ability…not to mention auto focus…make it a lot easier than it was a few years ago.

It can even be done with a Point & Shoot, as is evidenced by this shot with the Canon SX50HS. Sports Mode on the SX50HS is the best of any Point & Shoot I have yet owned. Focus is fast and accurate, and in Sports Mode seems tuned to pick up moving targets. Once you are locked on, the camera will shoot at 5 frames per second for 10 shots, and it focuses between frames. That is totally amazing performance for a Point & Shoot. The full fledged pro DSLRs do better of course, but the proof is in the results, and I have a strong feeling that a shot like this one would be prized no matter what camera it was captured with.

I have cropped this slightly from the full frame, and edited out another bird’s wing that protruded into the frame from the lower left, but I selected it from a sequence of shots of the same bird because it had the best wing position.

1200mm equivalent field of view. f6.5 @ 1/1250th @ ISO 400. Processed in Lightroom for intensity, clarity, and sharpness.