Common Loons

[Andrew McLachlan]

I spent much of this summer at family cottage on Horseshoe Lake near Parry Sound, Ontario photographing a pair of Common Loons with two chicks. Both chicks have survived. yesterday was time to close up the cottage for the winter and I had hoped for one last chance to shoot these loons. They showed up and off I went in the canoe. I can't decide if I should leave the loons dead center or if I should move them. I thought the pose of the two loons worked for dead center.

Nikon D200
80-400mm VR lens @ 400mm (VR on)
f8 @ 1/640 sec.
ISO 200

All comments welcome.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The opposing head angles make it OK as a centered comp left-to-right. I would, however, crop close to half of the bottom just to spice up the comp some. We don't often see photos of Common Loons in molting plumage, very interesting. The young one does not seem ready to leave on its own!!

[Arthur Morris]

Dead center is fine. An option would be to crop from our right (and from below as Dan suggested) as the adult is the dominant bird of the two compositionally (if that makes senses). Paddling faster towards the birds would have helped :) A nice juxtaposition of the adult and nearly grown young.

[Karen Summers]

Lovely shot I love these birds and have never photographed them and in this case I think the centre works really well

[Randy Stout]

Andrew:

As a loon fan, I always appreciate their images when they show up on BPN.
This one really speaks to the changing of seasons to me, with the molting adult and full grown juvi.
With that in mind, I find the loose crop a part of the story telling here, almost as if to say: Its a big world, and soon the juvi will have to face it on his own. Gives me a sense of the march of time.

I would crop a bit along the lines Artie and Daniel suggested, but would still leave lots of open water to 'tell the story'.

Just how it struck me!

Cheers

Randy

[Gerrie van Vuuren]

Ditto taking some space off the bottom. Love the special moment captured here.

[allanrube]

Art, it is hard to paddle faster without bothering the loons. :D

I was mostly teasing. But on my two chances with loons the birds always swam right up to the boat :)

ps: Randy's point however is a good one.

And yes, Andrew, having someone to paddle is a huge plus :)

[Andrew McLachlan]

Thanks to everyone for the comments. Very much appreciated. I will move the birds lower and to the right also. I wish I was closer on this one also, just so happened that they surfaced further away this time, however, the adult practically hit the canoe when surfacing on one occasion. I will post another image or two of them as I process them. Maybe I should have taken my 3 year old daughter along to paddle the canoe while I composed the images - she is always wanting to paddle the canoe by herself:D