Northern Gannet Head Shot

[Mark Jones]

I had a chance to visit RSPB Bempton located in East Yorkshire in Jun 2012. Huge cliffs overlook the North Sea and Bempton offers some fine avian photography of kittiwakes, puffins, gannets and more. Entry is free but they do charge for parking. I used my 1DmkIV with 300mm II and 1.4x converter to grab this head shot of a northern gannet as it stood on the edge of the cliffs with the dark blue waters of the North Sea behind it. 1/2000, f/8, ISO 800, 420 mm. I pulled this image from my flickr account and uploaded it to BPN instead of using an embeddable link from flickr. Can't go any bigger unfortunately with a download but am embedding the link below as well

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/mdjgcl2008/7485026734/" title="Gannet by Phaeton Place, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7251/7485026734_12ecddfe27_b.jpg" width="1000" height="672" alt="Gannet"></a>

[Randy Stout]

Mark:


I like the color scheme, pose, composition. Nice angle of head in the frame.

The copyright is too big and poorly placed for my taste.

Cheers

Randy

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Nice shot indeed. loved the BG..very different. Head position and exposure also look very good. Rule-of-thirds composition works well here.

[Frank Schauf]

Beautiful portrait, great details and sharpness.

[Mike Milicia]

Nice portrait with excellent detail and dark BG works well.

Might just be the jpeg for some reason but BG is quite splotchy in places.

[Karl Egressy]

Nice portrait shot, Mark. Love the HA and details.

[gail bisson]

The bird looks great and I love the comp. I see some JPEG artifacting in the BG- easy fix.
Love the color of the BG,
Gail

[Marina Scarr]

Very pleasing portrait of this gorgeous bird and works nicely against the blue of the sea. Composition spot on.

[Mark Jones]

The bird looks great and I love the comp. I see some JPEG artifacting in the BG- easy fix.
Love the color of the BG,
Gail
I don't see the artifacting on my computer on the original shot but for some reason it shows up after uploading. Not sure what's up with that. Any thoughts on the cause would be greatly appreciated. I haven't done anything different from what I normally do.

[John Chardine]

What makes the image for me is the great, dark background that sets-off the subject so well. Very nice.

[Mike Tracy]

Nicely composed. I like the complimentary colors of the background against the bird and his eye draws me in just right.

[PhilCook]

Lovely portrait, lots of detail and great eye, colors look nice and natural as well....there are some noticeable jpeg artifacts on the backdrop however, looking a bit like someone spilt water on the image in places on the backdrop

oops, just read the other post regarding artifacts, and no, sorry I cant offer a reason why it has happened only after uploading, but normally this kind of thing is as a result of highlight adjustment in PS, but if that was the case it should be in the image on your computer and not just the resized version