Skimmer with meal

[Bill Dix]

I watched the Black Skimmers skimming at Brigantine for a while last week, and never did see them catch anything. It wasn't until I got the images up on the screen that I realized quite a few of them had small fish in their splendid bills. This one had the best HA on the fish. Must take a lot of these little fish to power those big wings.

D90 | 500f4+1.4TC | ISO 640 | 1/1600s @ f/6.3 | +1.0 EV | monopod

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful one Bill, nice angle and the fish adds well...

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Excellent Bill, nice to get them flying towards you and fish definitely adds.

[Danny J Brown]

A nice shot Bill. The ratio of their wing size to body is amazing. You caught the tiny little fish sharply in your flight image. Good job.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Bill, I like the angle here....and not easy for the AF. very different. prey always a plus. Excellent DOF. well done.

[Grace Scalzo]

Nice angle, of both the bird and the fish. Eye contact is perfect.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Well done for sure, I like the incoming flight trajectory. Nice surprise prey item too! Techs are perfect. This would actually look better cropped more right and bottom IMO.

[Ofer Levy]

Sharp and nice angle. How much of a crop is it as IQ is not great and DOF looks a bit wide for f6.3 ?

[Karl Egressy]

These guys have amazing wing span by the looks of it. Beauty flight shot, Bill. The fis is a bonus.

[Bob Pelkey]

It's amazing to finally see the skimmer with its prey. I'd speculate that the species normally would consume the fish in the instant it's caught. But in this case, the bird was bringing a meal to its young perhaps? Remarkable image.

[Steven Kersting]

Nice capture.
Looks a bit flat/underexposed to me, probably due to no color space tag.
I think I'd prefer a bit more room left and top. If not possible then I think the tighter crop from Rt bottom would add more balance. I think I'd be looking for the head to be basically centered lower 1/3.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for your feedback and constructive comments. I've made a few minor tweaks to the repost: slight selective contrast boost to the bird to make the whites whiter and bring out a tiny bit more definition to the wings; very slight sat boost to the bg; and more crop on right and bottom. Let me know what you think.

[Bill Dix]

Sharp and nice angle. How much of a crop is it as IQ is not great and DOF looks a bit wide for f6.3 ?

Thanks for looking, Ofer. The OP was 67% of FF (horizontal px). The repost is 63%. I also thought the IQ was not as good as my previous Skimmer post, and perhaps it's not. But as I look more carefully, esp. at the repost, the IQ of the head looks OK on my screen. I think the far wing could have benefited from a little more DOF or SS.

[Bill Dix]

Nice capture.
Looks a bit flat/underexposed to me, probably due to no color space tag.
I think I'd prefer a bit more room left and top. If not possible then I think the tighter crop from Rt bottom would add more balance. I think I'd be looking for the head to be basically centered lower 1/3.

Thank you Steven. I'm not sure what you mean by color space tag. But hopefully the bit of contrast boost helps the 'flat' look of the OP.

[Steven Kersting]

Thank you Steven. I'm not sure what you mean by color space tag. But hopefully the bit of contrast boost helps the 'flat' look of the OP.The boost helps and I like the repost overall better.

I use safari on a Mac and the combination is very specific for the display of colors (it's "color managed"). If I open an image tagged as adobe Srgb it will be displayed correctly. If an image doesn't have it's color space tag the system displays the image "as is" using the monitors calibrated profile. I.E. (and most other browsers), on the other hand, displays everything as Srgb regardless of the color space tag. If you open an image tagged as Adobe rgb it will display incorrectly.

This is a huge problem for me as even a properly edited photo with the correct Srgb color space will display "wrong" on my system due to the lack of the tag. To include the tag you have to keep some exif with the image and when saving the image check the option for "embed color space". (I see many with all exif stripped, yours as well)

I don't know why so many strip the Exif from their images.... It doesn't make the file much smaller, and you loose all of the embedded creator/copyright tags that should be in the image file (if you care about that stuff).

[Bill Dix]

The boost helps and I like the repost overall better.

I use safari on a Mac and the combination is very specific for the display of colors (it's "color managed"). If I open an image tagged as adobe Srgb it will be displayed correctly. If an image doesn't have it's color space tag the system displays the image "as is" using the monitors calibrated profile. I.E. (and most other browsers), on the other hand, displays everything as Srgb regardless of the color space tag. If you open an image tagged as Adobe rgb it will display incorrectly.

This is a huge problem for me as even a properly edited photo with the correct Srgb color space will display "wrong" on my system due to the lack of the tag. To include the tag you have to keep some exif with the image and when saving the image check the option for "embed color space". (I see many with all exif stripped, yours as well)

I don't know why so many strip the Exif from their images.... It doesn't make the file much smaller, and you loose all of the embedded creator/copyright tags that should be in the image file (if you care about that stuff).

Thank you Steve. I don't consciously strip the EXIF from the images, but don't consciously save it either. Camera data seems to be saved by default as part of my TIFF files. When I save as a TIFF in Elements 9, the checkbox under Save Options:Color:ICC Profile:sRGB is checked, but perhaps this doesn't convert properly when I "Save For Web" as a jpeg, or into Safari. I don't see any checkbox for "embed color space" in Elements 9; maybe that is the same as the abovementioned "Save Options"? In any event, I appreciate the info. I'll be more conscious in the future about making sure copyright and keyword information is included in the EXIF.

[Herb Houghton]

Nice capture Bill. The fish adds to this, nice dof at f6.3. I hope to get them there in a few weeks.