4,200 hours; 720,000 photos; 6 years. That’s what Alan said it took him:
The photo I was going for of the perfect dive, flawlessly straight, with no splash required not only me to be in the right place and get a very lucky shot but also for the bird itself to get it perfect. I would often go and take 600 pictures in a session and not a single one of them be any good. But now I look back on the thousands and thousands of photos I have taken to get this one image, it makes me realise just how much work I have done to get it.
According to Alan, “the photo [he] was going for of the prefect dive, flawlessly straight, with no splash required not only [him] to be in the right place and get a very lucky shot but also for the bird itself to get it perfect.”
Here is the photographs in sequence:
For Alan, he never stopped to think about how long it was taking because, quite frankly, he loves it ever since he was a child:
I remember my grandfather taking me to see the kingfisher nest and I just remember being completely blown away by how magnificent the birds are. I’m sure my grandfather would have loved it. I just wish he could have seen it. All of my family contacted me when they saw it and said he would have been so proud.
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