Fly me away

[Lance Peters]

From my last trip to the gannets - challenging conditions- Bright sunlight - not a great deal of birds present - huge numbers of horse flies made it very very hard to stand still and take a single shot (They sting real good).

hard to get good flight shots of these guys - head angles and eye contact seem to be the issues - they just dont want to co-operate - for this one i was under the cliff they breed on and attempted to get some backlit shots.

D3
Nikon 200-400VR with 1.4 Converter
F10
1/500th
800 ISO
+1.0EV
SB 900 with better beamer
Manual flash @ 1/1

Cropped and sharpened - could lighten the eye area a bit.

Comments welcome.

[Jamie Douglas]

These are great looking subjects. Could a little more canvas on the right work? Shame the head angel isnt facing towards you. The gannet has a purposeful look though which I like.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Lance, I personally like the back-lit look and this gannet is quite nice. I know what you mean about not co-operating, I have the same frustration with woodpeckers and great blue herons! Some birds just won't pay attention! ;) Tough exposure scenario but you got a nice image.

[Bill Dix]

Lance - Looks like you made the best of tough conditions (and didn't even get any flies in the picture). Not being very familiar with use of flash, I'd be curious to know how much you think it helped erase the shadows at this distance on a sunny day.

[Gus Cobos]

I can understand your capture conditions Mr. Peters...you did the best possible considering...:) I like the flight angle and the wing spread...these are beautiful birds...looking forward to your next one...:cool:

[Lance Peters]

Lance - Looks like you made the best of tough conditions (and didn't even get any flies in the picture). Not being very familiar with use of flash, I'd be curious to know how much you think it helped erase the shadows at this distance on a sunny day.

Hi Bill - I was shooting from in the shade at the bottom of the cliff.
FP flash mode of course - birds would have been maybe 50-80 feet away - so if you do the math - I think the flash certainly has helped.
better beamer adds about 2-3 stops - 1/500th in fp mode has taken away about a stop or so of light - so lets say they even each other out and still have about a normal useable flash range.

[Joe Brown]

I can appreciate the difficult conditions your were dealing with. For me, the sky is too bright and the back lighting is not very effective in this particular shot. Bird's head/eye needs to be better lit. I suspect that earlier or later in the day when the light is lower in the sky would work better.
BTW You have a lot of great shots of these impressive birds on your website.
Joe

[Alfred Forns]

Way Cool Lance !!! I had trouble with these guys when I was up in Newfoundland !! Not easy birds for capturing detail ... particular with the conditions usually encountered !!! Big Congrats !!!

[Oscar Zangroniz]

I see you still use your trusty d3, maybe this was before the d3s ;)
Love the back light on the subject and the sharpness.
Regards my friend.