Barn Swallow

Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) also called the common swallow is one of those birds that fly so fast that i really struggled to click their mid air flight photographs.
These photographs were clicked some 200 kms off Gujarat coast in the North Arabian sea. I wonder how these birds came so far into the sea?  The bird has got a glossy blue colour and this makes photographing it difficult in bright background, especially when it comes to bringing out the details of the bird.The birds were majestically gliding in the air turning and twisting catching flies.

Barn Swallow

Because of the way this bird spreads its wings, it is a photographer's delight especially while in flight. These photographs were clicked at Sikka in Gujarat. It's a migratory bird of India. Since these birds feed on flying insects, they are airborne for most of the time, which makes photographing difficult, its only in the evening that I had a chance of capturing images of a few perched birds.
The second image in the series is actually one in a continuous frame of photographs, and freezes the moment of the birds take off. The first image has a bit of over exposed background. I had to do spot metering of the bird to get the details of the darker areas of the body and the shadow regions because of which I had to overexpose the blue background, and since the bird occupied most of the frame, I decided to go ahead with it.