Eager to Learn Spotlight Image for week ending October 12th, 2012: Randall Farhy - Inbound Tern

Congratulations Randall!

Spent the better part of an afternoon working a group of Terns at the Brigantine Wildlife Refuge (part of the Forsythe Reserve) in NJ. While I enjoy photographing birds, I am not familiar with the names of many sub-species. Conditions were overcast and windy, with varying degrees of light. This is only my second time working with Terns and I wanted to capture various in flight poses against backgrounds other than gray sky. I would prefer better background separation, but quarters were tight for a 400mm 5.6 in this particular spot. One of my favorite aspects of this image is the billowy pillow effect of the wings.

Camera: Canon 7D

Lens: 400mm F5.6L No filter

Exposure: ISO 800, 1/2000 F5.6 Handheld No Exp.Comps.

Focus: Back button, Center cluster (keeping a single point on these guys in flight is still a challenge!)

Metering: Evaluative, manual mode

Processing: Lightroom4, Topaz plugins: Denoise5, Adjust. Crop: Aprox 33% for position.

Thanks Daniel, very much appreciated. I was totally unaware until today, I'm just getting caught up with BPN all over again!