"Fish Toss 2"

[David Salem]

I posted the first frame of a three frame sequence a few weeks ago of this Elegant Tern doing a fish toss. This time it's a wings up pose and a donut shaped fish. Hope you like it.

1DX---600mm---f6.3---ss1/4000---ISO640---HH@6:15pm---35% crop.

Thanks as always for looking and for your input. I appreciate it.

David

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the wing position, IQ, water drops, ring fish, exposure and composition. Turn fills the frame perfectly. Excellent image David!

[David Salem]

Thanks Jim. After reading your response I should have renamed it "ring toss"

I forgot to mention that this is the second frame of the sequence

[Karl Egressy]

Amazing action shot, David. All I can say is it can't get any better than this.

[Enrique Patino]

what a dynamic pose. I love it. Would consider toning the bright-brights down a bit.

[Satish Ranadive]

Fully amazing action packed image. Beautiful pose with full up wings, great HA and exposure.

Regards,
Satish.

[Doug Brown]

Go ahead and rub it in! Nicely done!

[David Salem]

I wanted to show you guys and gals the original file so you could see how big in the frame the bird is. This behavior is pretty tricky to get because as you are tracking the Tern at almost full frame, it suddenly shoots straight up, obviously out of frame , and tosses the fish in the air. After trying for hours and hours to catch this behavior I decided to take on a different approach. I risked not getting the shot of the Tern coming out of the water with the fish, or the always cool shake shot, but it was the only way to try to get something different. I watched the flight paths of the Terns as they lifted off and figured about how high up they were when tossing the fish. Then I pre-focused to that distance, and then chased them up in the sky. I shot a ton of frames.
On my last Tern post Bill Dix mentioned that he didn't even want to ask how many frames it took to get that shot. Well Bill, I will tell you. I hit this spot quite a few times in the summer evenings, and when this spot is going off, and I mean 15-20 Terns diving for fish right in front of you at frame filling distances, I burn through two 32 gig cards in a 2-3 hour shoot. At 1300 frames per card, two cards per night, and probably 8 times this summer that it was on fire, so about 20,800 frames, to be exact. Thanks to everyone that commented on the last Tern post. I appreciate it

[Ian Wilson]

Thanks for the back-story David. An heroic capture that's for sure, I take my hat off to you. Salutations, Ian.

[Joseph Przybyla]

I echo all the previous posts. Your perseverance and dedication is admired. Thank you for sharing the image and background story.

[Bill Dix]

Amazing capture, again! Composes very nicely in the frame. Love the action, and the ring fish. And the background info. 20,800 frames: just as I suspected. Worth them all.

[Shawn Zierman]

Wow...again! Time spent=results. The results in this case being awesome.

[gail bisson]

Love the math here! Just goes to show that great shots like this are never "lucky" shots.
Love this one but I prefer the last tern toss.
And thanks for showing the OOTB image. I always love seeing the before and after- it is always instructional and really shows all the PP that is done.
I often think it should be mandatory for us to post the "as is out of the camera image".
Gail

[Tom van den Brandt]

Just a great shot David. Thanks for sharing the before too. Good to see both.

Cheers, Tom

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi David , brilliant on all counts .

Very well done . TFS Andreas

[David Salem]

Thanks again for the comments everyone.

Glad you guys liked the math calculations. Even though I shot over 20,000 frames at this location this summer, they weren't all trying to get this shot.
I was light heartedly showing, as Gail mentioned, how much shooting it takes to get a special shot like this. Very rarely do you get lucky in wildlife photography, it usually takes lots of getting out there and learning animal behavior.
Thanks again.

[Jonathan Ashton]

A truly amazing shot, certainly worth all the effort, images such as these, and of this quality are few and far between - congratulations on an outstanding image. This is a competition winner if ever I saw one.

[WillieHall]

good story about the numbers, effort, and dedication to get a photo like this. Very valuable seeing the original. Images like this inspire and thanks for sharing.

[Binu John]

Another stunning shot, David! Great action, composition and perfect exposure! Well done and TFS.

[David Salem]

Thanks everyone!!