ARCTIC TERN DIVE-BOMBING

Early summer visitors to the Farne Islands are frequently dive-bombed by territorial arctic terns. I stood in an area being vigorously defended, put a protective filter on my wide-angle lens and pointed it skywards, having manually pre-set both focus and exposure. Each time a tern zoomed in to peck my lens, I fired a rapid burst of shots until the camera buffer was full. The result was an unusual close-up perspective on a tern in flight.

F/9, 1/2,000th second, ISO 320
Accepted: Oxford 2013, Bardaf (Slovakia) 2014