Seeing Eye to Eye

[Bill Dix]

It was feast day on the lake for the Cormorants. Normally they would devour their catch within a second or two of surfacing after their dive. But this fellow took a full minute to deal with his oversized meal. This is about the middle of a 12-frame sequence ending with the tail disappearing down the gullet. It was in the shadows on a gloomy day, and I underexposed by a full stop - a perfect recipe for noise. I tried to find the best compromise between detail retention and noise reduction, but the IQ is less than ideal. Still, I thought the juxtaposition of the eyes made it worth sharing.

D7000, 700mm, ISO 1600, 1/2000s @ f6.3 manual, fill @ -0.7, although I don't think it fired on this frame.

[vishaljadhav]

Bill i like the image for the sheer moment captured, in wild we sometimes get moments we love all other things become secondary.
The birds effort in catching such a big catch it is bigger then the head and the full neck of the bird in the view,
All claps for a amazing moment captured

[Karl Egressy]

Based on the thumbnail image, I thought it was a new bird with a huge beak.
This is a huge fish. It is amazing that the bird ended up swalowing it. I also really like the position of the eyes and the action captured is great regardless of the IQ.
Excellent catch, Bill.

[laurie golden]

Thank you for sharing this one. So hard to believe he could swallow that big of a fish. IQ looks ok to me but I would wish for some color which only comes on sunny days.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Bill you have been catching some extraordinary images recently - congratulations this is a real corker. I was going to say did he swallow it and he did - amazing! Nature never fails to impress. great shot well exposed and sharp well done.

[dankearl]

Pretty wild! Hard to believe he thought he could swallow that.
Maybe he can, but I think the eyes are bigger than the stomach.
Neat photo!

[PhilCook]

lol...bet ti took a while until this cormorant could get off the ground to fly again, that's some meal !

Nice one Bill

[Dennis Zaebst]

Wonderful capture Bill. I don't think the IQ is off much at all...so good job handling the underexposure (not that that ever happens to me...haha.) I love the action and these are certainly amazing birds. I have a sequence I obtained while down at Darling this January. I plan on sharing one or two of those soon. Terrific image!

[Diane Miller]

Amazing! Maybe a world's record "catch"??

Great handing of the UE -- I wouldn't have known it was.

What would you think about taking a little off the top -- about halfway to the bird's head?

[Frank Schauf]

Wow, what a catch.

[Bill Dix]

Thanks everyone. I can attest to the fact that he swallowed it. I didn't see him fly afterwards. Here's a repost with a little off the top (thanks Diane). I also boosted the saturation of the bg, to bring out a little blue so it didn't look quite so drab.

[Diane Miller]

I really like the repost -- without the relatively empty space on top, my eye stays right on the bird and fish. Maybe it's just me, but my eye wanders to large areas where nothing is happening and keeps searching for something there, wondering why it was included. I don't like to be wedded to any particular aspect ratio -- I go by what fits the subject.

An exception for me is a lovely gradient or other subtle feature in a sky -- that will sometimes balance a subject.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Hey Bill not surprised you didn't see him fly...... did you see him sink?

[Doug Brown]

Absolutely amazing that they can swallow something so big! You did a great job bringing up the exposure in post!

[arash_hazeghi]

very cool Bill! All has been said above! I love how both eyes all looking at each other!

[Bill Dix]

Thanks Doug and Arash.