Black Skimmer and Chick

[Bill Dix]

From Nickerson on 1 August. In answer to Artie's question, there were numerous chicks on that date, mostly in this fuzzball stage. Most were at some distance from the rope line, but a few, such as this cutie and his sibling, were within range and in good evening light. A half-dozen photographers probably got thousands of frames.

D500, 500PF, ISO 1250, 1/2500s @ f/8 manual. Lowered tripod.

[annmpacheco]

Hi Bill, beak to beak with such a great view of the chick. I would suggest more of the parent and lifting the blacks to tease some detail on the head. Nice and sharp, maybe a lil clean-up on the sand. TFS

[Bill Dix]

Hi Ann. I anticipated that the first comment would be more of the parent. Alas there is no more. The focus of this, for me, is the beak and the chick, so I'm OK with it as posted but I agree just a slight bit more of the parent would have been nice. I was shooting a series that was framed to include the chick and the parent on the far right, not shown here. As it happened, the only frame that had the beak-to-beak interaction also had an unattractive pose of the RH parent, so I cropped tight, but there is no more canvas on the left. I also have many shots of the LH parent and the chick(s), similar to your "adorable" image, but none of those had the beak-to-beak action. I'll post one of those in due course.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Way cute, Bill. As tough as it can be to get the fine detail in these fuzzball's, you've done a great job. Love the tender interaction and the open chick beak. I like the framing (though you would have liked a bit more of the parent), and that you left the beach in its natural state.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)

[gail bisson]

I too, would love more parent but it is what it is!
Sweet interaction, good IQ and I would raise the exposure on the image by about 1/3 of a stop while masking out the white on the parents face.
Gail

[Matt Sutherland]

Nicely done. Agree with more parent but this interaction is a winner. Plenty sharp, well exposed. Thanks so much for sharing it!

[Joseph Przybyla]

I like this image a lot, a very tender moment captured. If mine I might try to open the black a tad so the eye would show more, but lovely as is. Thank you for sharing, Bill.

[Steve Kaluski]

Any Bill without the intersecting beaks?

TFS
Steve

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all. Steve, I captured over 300 frames of the Black Skimmer pair and their pair of chicks. Many with the LH adult (shown here) and one of the chicks, but this is the only one with the intimacy of the beaks touching, and the chick with open beak.

As to the comp: I agree that a bit more of the parent would be good. My only option was to borrow a bit of parent from a subsequent frame -- trickier than it sounds since the bird's position changed and it took some warping to mesh the two frames. Here are two different crops. (See next pane for the looser version.) I also opened up the blacks a little, and took Gail's suggestion of slightly increasing the exposure overall. Thanks.

[Bill Dix]

Here's the second version.

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi Bill, the RP comp wise is where it needed to be, but with a fixed lens I think it's alawys better to back off on the distance and allow some breathing space for the subject and do the final crop/framing in PP and never on site. Ten or even 15% these days is nothing in terms of cropping, it when you flip landscape to portrait that you are doing yourself an injustice. :w3

Opening up the blacks has certainly helped and because of the overall exposure the image has retained a lot of the good original qualities, but what I really do like is the adults bill and the 'groves' etched into it. Never seen this before so a nice treat thank you.

[Dorian Anderson]

Ditto the comments above but I'm not into composite shots - all all. For me, it's too much liberty with PP. I don't have an issue if people remove small and distracting elements but adding things beyond a bit of canvas opens an entirely different can of worms. Once you start adding to the frame, there's no limit to what you can do to it.

I was at Nickerson last week and walked away with zero chick shots, mainly because I was hyper-focused on flight shots instead. I would have been stoked with your original shot!

[Bill Dix]

Ditto the comments above but I'm not into composite shots - all all. For me, it's too much liberty with PP. I don't have an issue if people remove small and distracting elements but adding things beyond a bit of canvas opens an entirely different can of worms. Once you start adding to the frame, there's no limit to what you can do to it.

I was at Nickerson last week and walked away with zero chick shots, mainly because I was hyper-focused on flight shots instead. I would have been stoked with your original shot!

Fair enough, Dorian. I generally agree with you. I was just curious to see what I could do with it, but I wasn't unhappy with the OP. I hope you got some flight shots.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

I was in Nickerson Beach ( need to go through all the images from that trip ) but there no skimmer chicks. I need to plan another trip next year.

Love the image. I have another idea which is to only show the bill and the chick.

TFS