Arctic Tern

[Rich Steel]

Hi

This is another photo from my recent visit to the Farne Islands. This time it is an Arctic Tern which start attacking visitors as soon as they step off the boat. Head gear is essential as those beaks are sharp! With the misty conditions during the day it was always going to be white skies giving a high key effect.

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/arttern11.jpg

Taken with 1D mk3 and 70-200mm F2.8 lens at 70mm at ISO 320 F6.3 0.33EV at 1/3200s.

By strange coincidence the was some brief footage of the artic terns on the Farne Islands on TV last night. If This can be found for the next 6 days at the following link. The footage is approxiamtely 13 minutes into the show. This is followed by some footage of the Gannets at Bass Rock where I visited the following day.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c4yh0.shtml?filter=txdate%3A18-06&filter=txslot%3Aevening&start=1&scope=iplayerlast7days&version_pid=b00c4yg1 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/b00c4yh0.shtml?filter=txdate%3A18-06&filter=txslot%3Aevening&start=1&scope=iplayerlast7days&version_pid=b00c4yg1)

Cheers

Rich

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Rich love the pose and I'm sure you had many chances !!!

Great looking bird in full breeding plumage. Would go brighter and try having detail around the eye. With the conditions you had I think dialing in more plus would have been helpful, on severe overcast is not unusual going over two !!!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great pose, too bad you didn't have better light. I might enhance the catchlight a bit more.

[Stephen Stephen]

I love the pose Rich. Brightening the catchlight in the eye would move improve this image IMHO.

[Robert Amoruso]

Alfred covered my comments well. Great pose. Fill-flash would have killed here.

[Vincent Grafhorst]

very powerful image Rich!

[Arthur Morris]

Great pose but way too dark. Close to plus 2 full stops would have been much better. On white sky days white birds scream for lots of flash...

[Rich Steel]

Thanks for the comments. I agree that the photo is a little on the dark side but do not think its thats far out. When you get up close to an Artic Tern you realise that grey actually is the predominant colour of these birds, rather than white as you might expect. I have some potrait shots that illustrate this well. Flash would have been useful to light them up a bit.

Cheers

Rich

[Arthur Morris]

To reiterate. +1/3 stop cannot be right for an Arctic Tern on a white sky day with a MIII unless it is totally mis-calibrated for exposure and I have never heard of that. We need to be exposing to the right so that there is data in the fifth histogram box. Go back to the RAW file and check the histogram. I am betting that it shows that the image is well underexposed.

[Rich Steel]

Your right Artie :) I checked back through and +2 would have been much nearer the mark. Looking back through the raw files most of the shots were taken at +1 or +1/1/3, except a small batch that this shot was from.

Cheers

Rich