Several years ago I was visiting family in Maine, and Common Loons were nesting on a local cove. The chick was due to hatch a day or two after I had to leave. So this year I went a week later in the season, determined to get the classic shot of the chick riding on the parent. On the first day out the conditions were gorgeous - flat calm, soft light, beautiful dark green reflections in the cove - but no loon. On the second day, we spotted the loon with chick on the lake at the mouth of the cove, but lighting and water conditions were tough, and the chick had grown too large to get a free ride. It was, however, still getting a free meal. I was sitting on the floor of a little solo canoe, and a breeze kept pushing me too close to the birds such that I had to put down the camera and back-paddle to keep a respectful distance, although the loons didn't seem to care at all. This was 90% of full-frame, cropped to pano. I found it interesting that the parent must have some means of adjusting her buoyancy; every time she approached the chick she would sink her whole body lower into the water to be at the level of the youngster. (I say "she" but could have been "he".)
Bill, amazing. And great job working out the tough lighting situation. The lens can be very limiting with low light like that. I love the interaction here and I have always wondered how the parents got so low to feed the kids, too. Like every feeding picture I have ever seen has the parent partially submerged. The head angle on the parent is obviously not ideal here but it doesn't bother me. However, I feel the blue is a little purplish here so maybe a quick HSL adjustment would do the trick. What do you think?
I love the head angle of the chick but wish for a better HA from Momma (or Papa)
Great POV. Nice interaction
I see a purple/blue cast to the image.
Lucky you to have a problem with getting too close and having to move back!
Gail
Nice interaction here Bill, good low POV has helped - going much higher would have killed this image/ Adult facing away doesn't bother me as the primary subject is the chick, but I too see the aforementioned cast. Never seen a Loon myself, so I take it they don't show iridescence the same way a mallard does?
Nice interaction, like the proximity of chick and parent bill, low rider pose of adult.
The color is still a bit unusual on the repost. It is rare to see that much blue/purple that high up on the head. Neck yes, not usually on the head itself.
Most of the time, the back riding stops around 10 days of age, although I have rarely seen it go out to two weeks or a bit more.
Thanks for the input, Randy. I had not previously had an opportunity to photograph Common Loons in breeding plumage, so this was a treat and a challenge. Lighting conditions were difficult, and to make it worse, I underexposed this sequence. I tried to compensate in post, including selective saturation on the head. I obviously overdid it. Looking at my repost, the colors are indeed strange - not just the head. The water looks magenta. I went back to the original master and had another go. In this version I took out a lot of the saturation on the head. (I looked at some other loon images I took several days after this one -- I'll post a few of them soon -- and it seems that on that day at least, with different lighting, the color on the head is more greenish than blue and runs from the neck almost up to the crown.) In this repost the whites on the bird's back are pretty close to neutral. I hope this one looks a little more realistic. There may be some posterization.
A Tidbit for Junior
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