Ring-billed Gulls in Flight

In the winter I like to go to the Lake in Central Park on a cold, clear day and photograph Ring-billed Gulls in flight. I take some bread with me and a friend. The bread is for the gulls and the friend is to throw the bread up into the air so I have my hands free to take pictures.

I couldn't find anybody who wanted to come with me yesterday. Many of my friends had split for the long weekend and it was too cold for the rest of them. I went by myself and thought I could get some tourists to throw the bread up in the air for me but it was too cold even for them.

I was forced to throw the bread up in the air myself and then quickly swing my camera up and take a shot. I wasn't the best situation but I got a couple of decent shots.

I vary the camera settings to get different looks. This shot was madw with the camera in program mode. The flash freezes the body of the bird but the wings are moving too fast to be frozen at 1/200 so the have a motion blue. In other shots I used shutter priority to freeze the entire bird. I also used manual exposure.