Taken in Shetland in July 2010 with Nikon D700 - VR600mm F4G with a Nikon 1.4 TC (effective focal length is 850) at 1/1250, f7.1 ISO 450, -1/3 EV, no flash, Matrix Metering. Gitzo tripod with Wimberly head. No elements have been removed from original - it has been cropped. Processed with NX2. It have used NX2's equivalent of Curves, and HSB on this. Selective noise reduction applied to the background. Converted to this forums JPG size/color space via PhotoMechanic.
My own critique is this was taken mid afternoon and it shows. I was drawn to this because of the flowers and nice grassy setting. The light is striking the eye so that you can also see the pupil which I like. All comments are welcome (my first post). In particular, does the rock on the lower left act more as a distraction or help frame the Puffin and balance the rock on the right?
Hi Jon, There must be someone around here with a similar name as yours sounds quite familiar.... Thanks a ton for your membership support. Love the setting and the bright pupil. The whites look a bit bright. Did you recover the whites during conversion? I like the daisies but the light is relatively harsh especially for a puffin. A reverse S curve could help to reduce the contrast. Lastly but most importantly, the bird's head is turned away from the angle of it body; the result is a poor head angle. All are urged to see the various head angle threads in the ER. See you again soon.
ps: Where?
pps: The rock on the left is mildly distracting because it is so o-o-f...
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Artie, thanks very much for the fast feedback. I just tried your suggestion on a version on my computer (reverse curve) and it improved the harshness a lot. Now that you point out the head, I see that as well. The o-o-f impacting distraction is another good pointer thanks.
You probably remember me from your courses and IPTs. :-) See you in March.
Thanks again. Jon.
H i Jon, YAW. I knew that I recognized that name! I meant to ask, where did you make this image?
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Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
The picture was taken in Shetland on the southern edge of the 'mainland' called "Sumburgh Head". I was there in mid July. The trip was not a dedicated 'bird photography' trip which is why I had to take pictures at odd times of the day.
This is slightly off topic but I can highly recommend Shetland as a great place for Avian photography, especially in June and early July. Now that I have been there, I would just go again in a heartbeat. This time it would be exclusively for photography. Late at night is good as well for photography there - they are at the 60th parallel. Here is a partial list of the species I saw - Red Throated Loons (with chicks), Fulmars (with chicks), Gannets, Shag, Common Eider (with Chicks, Red-Breasted Mergansers, Red Knotts, Mallards, Mute Swans, Morhen, The American Oystercatcher (not the Black ones you see in Alaska), Ringed Plovers, Curlew, Turnstone, Arctic and Great Skua, Black-headed, Commonn, Razorbill, Lesser Black-Backed, Herring and Great Black-Backed Gulls Kittiwakes, Common and Arctic Terns, Black Guillemot, Puffin, Rock Dove, Meadow Pipit, Hooded Crow and others.
The picture was taken in Shetland on the southern edge of the 'mainland' called "Sumburgh Head".
England? Scotland?
I was there in mid July. The trip was not a dedicated 'bird photography' trip which is why I had to take pictures at odd times of the day.
This is slightly off topic but I can highly recommend Shetland as a great place for Avian photography, especially in June and early July. Now that I have been there, I would just go again in a heartbeat. This time it would be exclusively for photography. Late at night is good as well for photography there - they are at the 60th parallel. Here is a partial list of the species I saw - Red Throated Loons (with chicks), Fulmars (with chicks), Gannets, Shag, Common Eider (with Chicks, Red-Breasted Mergansers, Red Knotts, Mallards, Mute Swans, Morhen, The American Oystercatcher (not the Black ones you see in Alaska), Ringed Plovers, Curlew, Turnstone, Arctic and Great Skua, Black-headed, Commonn, Razorbill, Lesser Black-Backed, Herring and Great Black-Backed Gulls Kittiwakes, Common and Arctic Terns, Black Guillemot, Puffin, Rock Dove, Meadow Pipit, Hooded Crow and others.
Sounds amazing. How do you get there? Is a boat involved in transit? From where?
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Jon, I agree with most of the comments Artie has already given. I will probably be in the dog house for going against the HA police-but I think with this image the Puffin has a beautiful beak and showing it off would be my first concern as you have here, I can see the eye clearly and the beak is shown nicely with the slight degree of angling away. I too am drawn to this image because of the flowers and grassy scene. I think I would evict the OOF rock in the FG and tone down the bright spots.
Shetland belongs to Scotland - a bit of a long story. There are two groups of Islands north of the most northerly point in Scotland. Orkney and further northeast of there Shetland. I has a reputation for exceptional birding.
In terms of transit, there are two options, the first is a flight from a major carrier to a major city in Scotland then a smaller prop sized plane to the airport on Shetland. The other alternative is a ferry through some of the roughest water there is.
I am happy to talk with you further about this any time. It was quite extraordinary.
Thanks for the info. Can you stay on location (where the birds are) or do you need to take a boat every day?
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
I had sent some additional information to Artie so as not to take this thread too far off topic. He thought others might be interested so he asked me to post the information here.
Shetland is a beautiful place with a number of Nature Preserves and people that genuinely welcome you and go out of their way to accommodate visitors. To the best of my knowledge, there is only one tour company that does photographic tours in Shetland and they do it during June, the month I recommended. My guide there was a member of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) and while she was excellent in terms of identification and behavior she was not as much an avian photographer as I had thought so she did not understand about time of day, proximity, sun angle and other factors for making a good image - though she is a photographer. If I were to go again, I am positive those things could be corrected. To get really good images, I think one would want to take a boat around some areas because the cliffs are so high that shooting down moves you too far from the subject and leads to funny angles. The Puffins were the exception.
There is a trip to see Storm Petrels that I was to have gone on that was canceled because of bad weather which can happen up there. On that trip I was told not to take my 600 because it would be too much lens and that the I would have full frame shots with much shorter lenses.
It appears as if I left a wrong impression about the logistics of getting to Shetland and that day trips are all that are possible. We stayed there for a week, and while there are outer islands that you can take a ferry to - and we did - there are about 7,000 inhabitants in the main city of Lerwick and the majority of the remaining 22,000 or so on the rest of the Shetland 'mainland' as the natives like to call it. A small portion ore on the 'outer' islands. Ferry service to them is extensive and we did go to a nature preserve on one. We stayed at a cottage where one could have shot nearly 24 hours a day (if I had stayed there and had time). This as on a narrow inlet and from this location one could shoot, cerlew, common and arctic terns, the occasional Skua, Oystercatchers, and others I am sure I missed.
Places where there are interesting concentrations of birds are at any of the RSPB sites, and many of the islands. At the far south is the Sumburgh Head location I noted earlier - where I got the Puffins. "A Guide to Shetland's Breeding Birds" by Bobby Tulloch was recommended to me and I purchased it through Amazon. It has an extensive review of species and locations. This is out of print but I found a copy so if you search you may find one. Note that while there are several RSPB reserves, there are many other places to photograph - visitors are free to roam anywhere as long as they are respectful of private property and remember to shut the cattle gates. For this reason a local guide is recommended.
Here is a URL to the Wikipedia entry for Shetland, on that page you will find information about birds found there in general terms:
While I did not take the tours offered by "Shetland Wildlife" if I were to go again, this is something I would consider as they focus on avian photography. I spoke with the owner and he was quite knowledgeable but we went when trips were not available. Here is the URL to that site: http://www.shetlandwildlife.co.uk/holidays/photo.htm
I hope this helps. If there are more questions, please let me know.
Thanks Jon, I'll certainly get in touch for more info. You are right - just up the road for me :D
Did you manage to get to the Farne Islands (a little south of the Bass Rock)? This is also a first rate bird exprience. Let me know if you would like more info :)
We got to Moussa and were scheduled to get to Muckle Flugga but the weather caused that trip to be canceled. We also spent a week in Orkney mostly for non-birding activities. We did not get to the Farne Islands - so much to see :-)
Atlantic Puffin
