Northern Gannet

[Karl Egressy]

I took this picture while visiting Gaspe Quebec, last June.
Bonaventure Island has 320'000 nesting Seabirds, mostly Northern Gannets.
I was ready for flight shots all the time, hence the high shutter speed setting.
Thanks for looking.


Canon EOS-1D Mark IV
Manual Exposure
Tv 1/2000
Av 6.3
ISO 320
EF300mm f/2.8L IS USM

[Bill Dix]

Karl, the color and detail here are just extraordinary. Almost over the top, but making for a striking image. Nice pose, comp and exposure.

[Ofer Levy]

Very nice portrait! Nice light, colours and composition.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Great colors and details. Anything you can do to bring back just a hint of detail on the lower part of the neck? Just nit-picking there. Great image!

[Melissa Groo]

Stunner of a portrait, Karl. I love the intense colors, the IQ and the pose. I think it might be worth trying to bring in some more detail on lowest part of neck as Miguel points out.

[David Pugsley]

Some stunning colors there! Agree about trying to recover detail in the lower neck. The hot-spot it creates is mildly distracting. Maybe clean-up the bit of feathers sticking up from the bill.
Cheers!

[David Salem]

Karl, Very nice portrait. Beautiful light and colors and I like the eye ring color matching the water BG. Good comp too. Ditto on the hot spot. Great Job.

David

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Karl, the striking colours and detail have been brought out so well in this, and the skyward pose looks good. Love the hint of feather on the upper part of the bill. It may spoil the angle of the pose, but looking at the OOF horizon, I would give this a slight CCW rotation. :w3

[Ivan Ellison]

Lovely image, Superb detail, I really like the two tone BG, it compliments the bird beautifully- the two tones in the bird. Nice simple pose and angle to his head.

[Karl Egressy]

Hi Karl, the striking colours and detail have been brought out so well in this, and the skyward pose looks good. Love the hint of feather on the upper part of the bill. It may spoil the angle of the pose, but looking at the OOF horizon, I would give this a slight CCW rotation. :w3

Thank you all, thanks Stuart.

I did some rotation and also tried to get some details in the lower neck area. I used linear burn in CS5, as I don't have any specific program to bring out more details with.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Colours look great, and I like the blue eyering matching the BG. I'm OK with the feather debris on the bill, but the hot spot is unfortunate. Do you photograph in raw? The "recovery" slider found in LR and ACR sometimes work wonders. If not you could always try cloning in some neighbouring feathers at a low opacity (say, 30 percent-ish). Love the comp!

[Marina Scarr]

Lovely portrait of this gannet, Karl. The OP looks good to me although agree on the rotation. Your RP could probably use a little more rotation as the horizon line may not yet be quite level. Love all of the details you acquired here, especially the hint of the wispy feathers in the beak. Your graduated blue BG is also quite attractive.

[Karl Egressy]

Colours look great, and I like the blue eyering matching the BG. I'm OK with the feather debris on the bill, but the hot spot is unfortunate. Do you photograph in raw? The "recovery" slider found in LR and ACR sometimes work wonders. If not you could always try cloning in some neighbouring feathers at a low opacity (say, 30 percent-ish). Love the comp!

Thanks Daniel.
I don't know if you saw the repost. I think it has more details now. Yes, I shoot in RAW all the time since 2005 for sure, maybe a bit earlier.
As soon as I sold my 10D and replaced it with a 20D, I switched over to RAW. 10D was great with jpeg but couldn't handle RAW very well.
I have LR 4 but I haven't used it much yet. Just got it not too long ago.
I use the Lightroom built into CS5 which is LR 3, I believe.

[John Chardine]

Hi Karl- A bird close to my heart! I love the pose and overall simple design of the image. Also really like the feather detail in the neck.

I think the image is over-saturated and can easily be fixed. Also I see a "graininess" in the image which is hard to diagnose. The 1DIV at ISO 320 should be smooth as silk. Could it be a heavy crop, heavy sharpening?

[Jim Crosswell]

Beautiful image Karl. I like the pose, colours and composition.

[Frank Schauf]

Perfect, with great eye contact, Karl.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

Repost shows better white detail to me. Love the pose and great color