Photographing Racing Pigeons

So you want to take some pictures of racing pigeons, well get ready! It is a real challenge to take a picture of a bird in that atheletic stance, where the bird is standing alert, their eyes focussed, ready to launch into orbit to win the next big race.

By the way, if you have any good pics you can send them to me David Tichbourne - I'll post them here on Pigeon Planet.

The picture above is actually a very tame bird ("Old Mealy"), I have a digital camera which takes pretty good action photos (as you can see). The flash will bother some birds more than others. I have some other very good shots of the bird above alias "Old Mealy", but you will find that a digital camera is the only way to go with photographing pigeons.

Taking pigeon pictures is often tricky. Even tame birds seldom give you that perfect pose. I have come up with the pointers below from my own errors and from some experts (Rick Phalen and friends) cbspigeon@cbspigeon.com. Checkout their website, www.cbspigeon.com, they do a fantastic job with their photographs! Here are the pointers:

• Practice and patience.
• The bird is placed in a rectangular box, to try to control movement.
• Setup your (digital) camera on a tripod, about 2&1/2 feet from the bird.
• No sudden movements, this is not part of the birds' daily routine, so they will be nervous.
• Some birds are camera shy and go wild, as you will see, but be patient.
• As an option a blue background on the floor and walls of the box will make it easyier for you to edit the digital image with your photo software.

And one last thing, GOOD LUCK!!