speed blipping dragons

Ha! Well wasn't yesterday's write-up a bit silly, what with you all facing freezing temperatures and massive storms, certainly not an insect in sight and I'm prattling on about how to shoot a dragon. Often I don't think when I am writing these essays, I just open a word document and start pouring out my random thoughts. Should you choose not to read, well that is just fine with me so don't feel compelled. Anything important I try to keep at the top.

Many times I have mentioned in the past how many dragon blip opportunities that I have, chasing them away with my feet etc. So, after talking the talk, I decided to see how many dragons I could shoot in an hour. I soon lost track of time and very soon lost count of dragons. Towards the end of the safari, I started to wonder if I had enough material for this exercise, but two hours in to the processing and not half way through, I stopped worrying about that!

It was a very interesting, informative and enjoyable experience, marred only by the farmer walking back and forth, harvesting his crop, but what can you do, it's his field! Not all great shots, but it will give you an idea of what I am talking about. Further to yesterday's blip, my success rate was indeed better than 50%.

I shot 253 frames in 84 minutes for 34 different subjects and 43 keepers. I didn't take nearly as many shots of each subject as I normally would, the object being to get close enough for a shot. Some I didn't nail, some the exposure is wrong, some are experimental, some would normally be binned, but the exercise was to find out how many an hour.

The results are in, I blip at a speed of 24 dragons per hour. Not too shabby!

I have put the collection in a Flickr slideshow for those interested.

Dave