Crested auklet

[Milo Burcham]

Crested auklet
Saint Paul Island, Alaska

From a recent trip to the Pribilofs. These were by far my favorite bird out there. Given the low light, I would have shot wide open but erred and had my aperature set to 9 resulting in many soft images of this bird. Luckily, a few were good. Cropped to 3500 pixels.

Camera Model: Canon EOS 5D
Date/Time: 2008:07:03 13:40:36
Shutter speed: 1/40 sec
Aperture: 9
Exposure mode: Av
Exposure compensation: +2/3
Flash: Off
Metering mode: Evaluative
Drive mode: Continuous: frame 1
ISO: 400
Lens: EF600mm f/4L IS USM
Focal length: 600mm
AF mode: AI Servo AF
Image size: 2912 x 4368
Image quality: Raw
White balance: Auto

[Ramon M. Casares]

That eye, that crest, that lovely "smile" and the rain, those drops in his back... and the BG goes perfectly with his colours, for me, just a 10/10! Congratulations!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I'd love to see this species sometime. They look so unusual. I like the eye contact, details and BG. It looks a bit flat on my monitor, which should be easy to fix. Thanks for sharing!

[Krijn Trimbos]

I echo Axel's comments and would also clone out the rain streaks, cause IMHO there aren't enough of them present to add to the picture. Still a lovely portrait of a very very cool bird

[Ken Watkins]

Now that is a strange looking bird, I agree with the comments on flatness.

[Aristotle Georgiou]

Great portrait of a fantastic and interesting bird.

[c.w. moynihan]

Fantastic shot Milo of this most unusual character. Cheers !

[Steve Metildi]

Milo, great image. No need to change a thing.

Steve

[Rene Quenneville]

Great shot. There is a lot of character displayed by this smiling unusual fellow. I realy like it.

[Juan Aragonés]

This is fantastic Milo. Love the species and would love to see in the field some day but, by the moment, I am happy to see this excelent portrait. The soft light is a key element on the image and the eye contact is absolutely killer. The raindrops are a big bonus.
Hey Milo I just noticed that we live in two cities with the same name:)!

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Lovely portrait with loads of details. He's got a funny look & a Elvis Presley kinda hair-style ! :P
Have never seen this species - TFS.

[Fabs Forns]

Lovely portrait, it looks so exotic to me :)

[Doug Brown]

Really nice portrait of a great bird. I would redo the black point in this image. I think the blacks look a little washed out in your post because of the + EC. I might have considered using - EC in this photo because it appears that the blacks were rendered gray. Here's a repost with a new black point.

[Milo Burcham]

You bring up a good point, Doug, but your image is too warm/brown. What you did catch is that my EC was way over, resulting in exposing WAAAY to the right for an overall dark image, luckily, only blowing out the red channel in the beak. This definately robbed me of valuable shutter speed, too. The image darkened up nicely in PS, but I could have made the black point a bit darker. Also, most of what I shot was in fog/drizzle on this trip resulting in many images w/o true blacks until adjusted. Thanks for the comment.