Took my first trip out to Bass Rock off south-east Scotland last week. This is the largest single island gannet colony in the world with over 150,000 birds present. I can't even begin to put into words being in amongst and up so close to so many gannets, a truley awesome experience and wildlife spectacle. The sights sounds and smell!! will be a lifelong memory and I am sure that will not be my last trip there. After the visit to the island some chumming was undertaken off the back of the trawler. It was difficult to know what to expect but the action was fast and furious and so close I was glad to have to 70-200mm on the camera. Here is a photo of one of the gannets at point of impact during the chumming.
Taken with 1Dmk3 and 70-200mm lens at 70mm. ISO 320 F6.3 -0.67EV at 1/2000s.
Outstanding Rich !!!! Love the action and symmetry while doing a technically fine image !!!
Tried for one like this last year at Newfoundland but come up empty, they dive at a tremendous speed. Just had a ball watching them Big Time Congrats !!!!
I'm a big fan of gannets and this is a great image. I like the timing, details and exposure control. I might remove the specular highlights in the water. Thanks for sharing!
Many thanks for the replies. Gannets are wonderful birds and I stillI have many more photos to wade through from the trip, so I expect there will be some more photos to be posted in the near future.
Hi Rich, awesome capture and using a 70mm fl, wow!!! In my monitor the image looks dark and flaw and I think that this image can be processed to extract more details both from the whites and dark areas. I reprocessed this jpeg and I am sure that if you work on the RAW file you will note an improvement in the image. The work with a small jpeg produce a poor result. I suggest to process the RAW file to obtain two versions, one exposed for the whites and other exposed for the blacks (and maybe a third one processed for the midtones). Please, have a look at the following thread in which I explain the method I use for process this kind of images (http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=11412). I think that your gannet is good enought to invest some time in a more complex processing. :)