With wildlife and bird photography we often shoot at high frame rates. Modern cameras can shoot at 20 frames per second all the way to as much as 120 frames per second. This means that we are getting a lot of images. Just four or five seconds of shooting can provide a hundred or more images. So why do we need that many images of the same subject? If you have read a lot of my blogs relating to landscape photography, you will know that I do not advocate shooting the same landscape to death while other compositions lie and wait. I only want to keep shooting the same landscape image IF the light or something changes. So why do we want hundreds of images of the same bird or animal in wildlife photography?

          In bird and animal photography, especially when action is present, all those images provide us with choice. We can pick the exact moment. You will be surprised to see by how much a bird's wing moves in a fraction of a second. Having a hundred or more images help us to pick the precise wing placement that we want. Have you ever seen a bird in flight image where its wings are in their normal static position as if it is not flying. Such images just do not work. It drives our minds crazy and we don't expect the bird to be able to fly or to be in the air. Yes, a millisecond can make a huge difference.

          We now have a burst of a hundred or more images of the same bird. We are assuming that the exposure is similar between all the images in the burst. What criteria do we use to select the perfect image?

1. Focus. The bird's eye needs to be sharp.

2. Eyes. Bird's often have a membrane that can cover their eyes. When that membrane is deployed those images are ruined. Check for clear eyes.

3. Pose. Pick the most interesting pose where the wings and everything else look the best.

4. Composition. Is the subject placed better in this frame versus that frame?

This should leave you with just a few images, the best ones. How do we now select between the best of the best?

Details now matter the most as most of the images should now be very similar. We start comparing the images' details by looking if there are any distractions in front of the bird's face (such as grass). Look at the poor little frog. As the bird is moving and the frog's legs are moving, we now look for the best separation. We don't want part of the frog to be in front of the bird lest it should no longer stand out and thereby lose impact. We want to select the image where that frog is best visible. These details make one image better than another.

          Selecting the right image can take time but it is well worth it because small variations can make a big difference.