Yellow-eyed Penguin

[Paul Davey]

Forgive me if trawling through the story is a bother. This was an exciting opportunity to photograph. I am open to suggestions; comments and critique. Please try to do so.

Yellow-eyed Penguin (Megadyptes antipodes). An iconic bird of New Zealand, the Yellow-eyed Penguin has adapted to human expansion and nests from burrows in coastal farmland to the reaches of native forest itself - especially on the sub-Antarctic Antipodes Islands for which it is scientifically named. The Otago Peninsula is a renowned locality for the penguin. There, they breed their in numbers due to intensive conservation and pest destruction. Often at the start of each year immature birds can be seen moulting the rest of their down. At this stage they are very vulnerable to predators - they have not yet been accustomed to humans, so sometimes they can be rather accepting of a photographer like me.

In this case it was more than that, up to an extent. I was at the tip of The Mole, a boulder bank at the mouth of Otago Harbour opposite Taiaroa Head. I saw two birds, which is a frequent sight at this time of the year just after the breeding season. They were right at the shoreline of the rocks, just out of reach of seals and crashing waves. The Mole is a favourite haul-out for seals and on this occasion there was about nine individuals scattered across the lower rocks. Many times I was given a hearty roar, but they really are too tired to be bothered chasing down at this particular place where dozens of people traverse each day to see the sights and oversee departing ships. After a period of worrying at the edge of the cove I worked out a pattern in which to get into a good angle for the light. There were also precautions to make as the seals were sleeping at almost every difficult place. Eventually I did get into position. The nearest seal was to my left one metre away dozing. We were separated by a two foot strand of rocks. I got down low and watched the penguin nonchalantly hop from one rock to the other in my direction. It’s companion bird was in no position to do so. A seal was asleep right in front of it after a almost fatal showdown, so the penguin remained tight to wait out the nap. Photograph after photograph I took. At one point I was using Macro Mode with full optical zoom enabled. It was not possible to move further around to get some side lighting due to the clash of seals; flash was necessary although the bulb on my “compact” is reaching the end of its days. Only a few results that night had a tiny catch light in the eye. With about sixty photos taken I quietly left the scene. Some people were arriving. The bird looked up, then continued what it was always doing - preening, bar moments where it would look around and observe me.

Fujifilm Finepix S5600, Aperture Priority mode, 1/950 sec, ISO 200, f/3.2, c. 330mm optical zoom, flash

Today. Sporadic overcast conditions with small splashes of sun. Evening, around 7PM.

Straightened/rotated with Microsoft Digital Image 2006 to balance tilted horizon. No cropping.

Thanks,

Paul

[Arthur Morris]

First the image. I rather like this one. I like the composition and the head angle and the nice framing. The whole bird looks soft. Selectively shaprening and darkening the face would help a great deal.

You wrote:

"No cropping. I am getting frustrated again with the 146KB limit. To get this down to exactly 45.4KB I had to scale it down to 600 pixels. Bother."

Can I assume that 45.44KB was a typo and should have been 145.44KB?

I am not sure why your images consistently lack density and sharpness but I suspect that either the files from you camera are not of high quality or your post-processing skills are deficient (or a combination of both). As for your concerns about the size limits, you are barking up the wrong tree. I routinely post images of less than 50 kb, sometimes half of that. And they routinely leave folks stunned with their quality.

Later and love, artie

[Paul Davey]

Woops, sorry Artie. I got mixed up with file sizes. A 145KB image has been posted and it certainly looks much better.

Paul

[Arthur Morris]

It looks better, bout your processing skills are lacking. Still not much density in whites and in the face.

Later and love,

artie

ps: How's this:

[Paul Davey]

Hi Artie and thanks for replying

I can hardly notice a difference between the original ans your example at first glance, but I can now see your's seems slightly darker. I'm not sure how to decide which is better, but all the same I appreciate you commenting.

Paul

[Rich Ikerd]

Hey Paul - enjoyed your story about capturing the image here. My wife and I had a great time on the eastern shore of Otago a few years ago seeing several yellow-eyed penguins leap from the ocean. Quite an experience if you've never seen them before. As for the image, I like the composition but feel that it just needs a bit more contrast to really highlight the wonderful coloring of the penguin. Artie's recommendation, I believe, is to recommend a bit more post-processing to bring out that contrast. I'm not familiar with the MS Digital Image software so I can't recommend how to do that with that software, but playing around with levels and curves adjustments and a bit of sharpening will help improve what as the potential to be a very nice image.