Another Cormorant - Little Pied

[Tony Whitehead]

We seem to be having a run of Cormorant posts. In NZ they are known as shags and the Little Pieds are ferrying food to their growing nestlings. My daughter and I had fun yesterday evening photographing them and some of the approaches are quite kamikaze. When the sun broke through we had some brief decent light.
Nikon D300
Nikon 200-400
ISO800, 1/640 f8

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great pose and exposure control. I also like the fanned tail. I only wish for a bit more head turn toward you.

[joel quenneville]

Good job on a tricky exposure. The outstretched wings and fanned out tail combine to make a nice flight image.

[Juan Aragonés]

Great exposure job on this B/W cormorant Tony. The open beak is a great bonus and you have a very nice eye contact and wing/tail spreading. I only suggest to tone down the sky a little bit to made the bird pop from the BG.

[Arthur Morris]

Lovely bird and lovely light esp. for the underwing detail. My only wish is that the bird's head was not angled slightly away.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Juan's repost has brought out a pale area behind the bird. Tony, was there some work done there? Anyhow, you've caught quite a dynamic pose...the open bill is a big plus but as already mentioned I too would like to see the face angle more towatds us.

[Tony Whitehead]

Thanks guys. Juan, I really like that darker blue BG. Daniel, there was no work done there - they were actually dark blue/grey clouds so there was some tonal variation in the BG that has been accentuated with processing and JPG saves.

[James Salywoda]

I like the original better Tony I think it looks excellent against the background you took it with sweet pose and detail.....

[Ramon M. Casares]

I think the head angle is very good here and it doesn't seems to be looking away but a little bit towards us, the open bill tells me this as I can see the right inner side of the bill, love the darkened sky version and pose and exposre are terrific, the head looks a bit soft though. Congratulaitons!