The Blue Lagoon: Nice Background Jack!

[Arthur Morris]

Coming Soon to the blog: lots of great Midway images and adventures. This one gives you a taste of things to come. I created this tight head portrait of a Laysan Albatross this morning (4/14/11) at 8:58am with the Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS II lens with the 1.4X III TC (hand held at 280mm) and the EOS-1D Mark IV.ISO 400. Evaluative metering at zero: 1/1000 sec. at f/9 set manually after histogram check.

What can I say? I love my style. Though one might think that images like these are are a dime a dozen it does take some care to achieve perfection. With the distant azure-blue lagoon background I was able to stop down considerably to ensure a sharp head and bill at close range and took lots of images to ensure getting at least one with the absolute perfect head angle.

(The above excerpted from today's BAA Bulletin #370 (http://www.birdsasart.com/2011/04/14/birds-as-art-bulletin-370/).)

[denise ippolito]

Killer blue BG. I love the sharp details and the composition.:S3:

[Michael Zajac]

Great exposure and sharpness.Nice eye contact and BG.

[Doug Brown]

Gorgeous bird expertly captured Artie!

[Ofer Levy]

Doesn't look it requires a very challenging field work to get this (considering the 320mm and no hide) but result is lovely...:w3

[John Guastella]

Awesome image in every way. The white bird against the blue background is stunning and I love the pastel shades of the bird's bill. I'm curious to know what percent of the full-frame this image is and whether you use NR on the BG .

John

[Arthur Morris]

Doesn't look it requires a very challenging field work to get this (considering the 320mm and no hide) but result is lovely...:w3

With more than a million albatrosses the challenge is not in getting a photograph of the head of one, but getting a good or excellent one.... And that can be a very great challenge for many. I am sure that you would do just fine here.

[yogesh_puranik]

superb sharp image nice exposure i liked this composition and that blue BG is complementing the whites..BTW: i wanted to know whether you have clicked this from hide? as if it is FF from 280mm..
here in Pune, India i used to click by 55-250 IS lens..& it really difficult to go so close..

[Randy Stout]

Artie:

A very elegant looking bird, really like the subtle grey cheek patch and matching colors in bill, nice crop for this subject, techs great.

Cheers

Randy

[Dumay de Boulle]

gorgeous image...May be a dime a dozen...But still skill is needed to pull a image off of this quality. I suppose as close perfection as it gets.

[Dave Leroy]

Lovely image.

I am amazed by how clean the bird is.

A very happy looking bird.

Dave

[Nancy Bell]

Artie, I love your style too :bg3:. Those clean, crisp headshots are brilliant. Maybe a dime-a-dozen for some, but a goal for me.

[Arthur Morris]

Awesome image in every way. The white bird against the blue background is stunning and I love the pastel shades of the bird's bill. I'm curious to know what percent of the full-frame this image is and whether you use NR on the BG .

John

Full frame (no crop) and no NR other than what I have set as the default in ACR.

[Arthur Morris]

superb sharp image nice exposure i liked this composition and that blue BG is complementing the whites..BTW: i wanted to know whether you have clicked this from hide? as if it is FF from 280mm..
here in Pune, India i used to click by 55-250 IS lens..& it really difficult to go so close..

No reason to hide :) The birds are silly tame; you have to step over and around them....

[Stu Bowie]

Excellent exposure Artie, and the detail and sharpness is simply outstanding. The grey on the head does add interest, and just love that blue BG.

[Brendan Dozier]

Beautiful image, Artie! Awesome looking bill, and like the black & grey coloring around eye & face.

BTW - I read back in March, The oldest known free-flying bird in the United States, a roughly 60-year-old albatross named Wisdom, hatched her chick weeks ago on Sand Island at Midway.

[Mike Milicia]

Perfect always works for me! :S3:

Fantastic IQ and gotta love that BG!

[Kiran Poonacha]

I love your style too :S3: