Homer IPT - Day 2 - Yellow Billed Loon

[Mark Farnan]

Not an Eagle, but something different. We had an excellent day, with average eagle shooting, but all sorts of other cool stuff going on.
See the Wildlife forum for the Otter.

I'm not much of a birder yet, only getting into it this year, but I'm told by "reliable people" (i.e. Art !) this is a Yellow Billed Loon.

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Canon 1dIV with 800mm/5.6 Lens.
ISO 800, 1/500, f5.6, Manual mode.

I burnt the bill a bit , and had to recover/clone a couple specular highlights
Also cloned out a few bits of trash/odd colour splotches from the water and cropped.

Processed in Lightroom, with only cloning in PS on uncalibrated laptop.

All Comments welcome.

Regards

Mark

[Randy Stout]

Mark:

You were fortunate to see this fellow. He is indeed a yellow bill, well into his molt. Besides the yellow bill( which is also much bigger), the patterning on the back is less detailed than the common loon

Your processing did a good job recovering the blown areas. The image shows off his huge bill well.

If you get to see some more of them, look forward to more pictures.

Have a great time!

Cheers

Randy

[Gary Esman]

Nice low angle shot of a bird I may never see. That is one large bill. Would love to see more. Gary.

[denise ippolito]

Mark, We were lucky to see this one and be able to get so close. You did well with the processing as Randy mentioned and I like the water color. Nice job.:S3: