Some photographs take a thousandth of a second. Getting to that thousandth of a second took me two hours sitting motionless against a fence in the cold.
The waiting game
Wildlife does not perform on schedule. I had seen this great tit working the same hedgerow for several mornings, always landing on the same exposed branch before dropping to feed. So I set up, framed the empty branch, and waited.
Reading the moment
When it finally came, it stayed for perhaps three seconds. Long enough — if you have already done the work. Exposure locked, focus pre-set on the branch, finger on the shutter. There is no time to think when the moment arrives; all the thinking has to happen before.
Preparation is what turns luck into a photograph.
I came home with one frame I was happy with out of nearly two hundred. That ratio sounds brutal until you realise the other one hundred and ninety-nine were the price of the one.