Photographer Recreates Kingfisher Shot That Took Six Years in Simply Six Minutes

Back in 2015, Scottish photographer Alan McFadyen spent six years and fired off 720,000 photographs in his quest to seize the proper kingfisher {photograph} — a picture that went on to turn out to be an web sensation. A decade later, armed with fashionable digicam know-how, he recreated the identical shot in simply six minutes.

McFadyen tells PetaPixel that after he bought a brand new Nikon Z9, he needed to see how “things had progressed” within the intervening ten years. He shot the unique kingfisher picture on a Nikon D4.

“It was night and day. Six minutes instead of six years tells the story,” McFadyen says. “Instead of 12 frames per second, I can now shoot at 30 frames per second, so when a bird dives at 30 miles per hour, it makes it so much more likely you’ll capture it at the right moment.”

McFadyen says that the focusing system can be “incredibly fast” on mirrorless cameras. “It can lock on the kingfisher’s tiny eye at these super-fast speeds,” he provides.

When requested whether or not {a photograph} changing into simpler to take lessens its worth, McFadyen pulls no punches.

“It definitely does, in my opinion, it’s not as challenging now.” But he provides, “With time being precious in life, it’s not such a bad thing. In the wildlife photography game, we face so many challenges out of our control, so it’s a blessing having technology making it a lot easier.”

McFadyen says he nonetheless prefers the 2015 model of the picture. He didn’t deploy flash for that one, whereas he had to make use of flash for the 2025 model due to heavy rain.

“It’s still my favourite photo after all these years,” McFadyen says of the primary kingfisher picture. “It is still getting shared far and wide online and has really boosted my photography business. I look back proudly on it and never tire of the attention it receives. A lot of time and effort went into obtaining that image, so I’ll never get tired of seeing it.”

More of McFadyen’s work may be discovered on his Instagram and website.

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Image credit: Photographs by Alan McFadyen.