Blue-foot Vaudeville

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 98mm. ISO 400. f/7.1 @ 1/640s. -0.3 EV. HH. 68% of FF.

Blue-footed Booby courtship, taken on North Seymour Island, Galapagos three weeks ago. These guys are incredibly entertaining, and go about their rituals oblivious to the dozen tourists just a few feet away. BG was difficult on all of my Booby shots; resorted to a slight blur here. C&C encouraged and appreciated.

[Randy Stout]

Bill:

Very funny picture, they do look like clowns. Well exposed under somewhat challenging conditions with the light angle well off to your right. If you haven't done so already, perhaps a little shadow work to even them out a bit.
Was a lower shooting angle possible to throw the background further out of focus?

I am struck by the difference in pupil size here.

Cheers

Randy

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Randy. Lower shooting angle would have been tough; I was sitting down, and lying on the path would have been difficult surrounded by other viewers who were crowding in to get the same angle, and it would have put the blue foot behind a foreground rock; otherwise it might have worked to help the bg. I thought about doing some s/h or dodging to even out the shadow , but since it was caused by the other bird and not some other source, I decided to leave it as is. I might try a version with a reduced shadow to see how it looks.

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Wonderful, fun action image . I love it. Excellent detail and eye contact and I too wonder about the pupils ??? L

[Bill Dix]

Wonderful, fun action image . I love it. Excellent detail and eye contact and I too wonder about the pupils ??? L

Thanks Judy Lynn. The females have the large pupils; the males the small. I don't know if this is true all the time, or just when they are courting, but all of my images of various individuals show this.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the funny poses, good sharpness, head angles and I like that the rocks didn't block the feet. I might lighten the shadow on the neck of the bird on the left.

[Ofer Levy]

Lovely behaviour shot!

[Juan Aragonés]

I like this one a lot and whish that the shadow of the first bird doesn´t overlap with the seconf one. This one bring back memories of a visit to "Isla de la Plata" off Ecuador in 1995 in which I witnesed the cortship behaviour of this species. Really funny performance and beautiful. Thanks for sharing and hope to see more from your trip ;)

[Daniel Cadieux]

Neat behaviour image, and way cool with the differently sized pupils! I would just be careful with the blurring, it looks great in the BG itself, but not so much at the transition where it meets the "ground" at left and just above the birds' backs.

[Bill Dix]

Neat behaviour image, and way cool with the differently sized pupils! I would just be careful with the blurring, it looks great in the BG itself, but not so much at the transition where it meets the "ground" at left and just above the birds' backs.

Thanks Daniel. I agree the blur transition is a bit abrupt. What I should have done is make a light pass with a low-opacity eraser along the edge of the blur layer to ease into it. Should have saved the layers. I appreciate the observation.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Hello Bill.

These are funny and beautiful birds indeed, lovely feet and eyes.