Weed Dance

[saleeltambe]

Folks,

I am posting after a long gap...in fact several months gone in between after my last post!

This is the famous and spectacular courtship phenomenon of Great Crested Grebe - when they perform a dance using the aquatic weeds. The male picks up a few twigs and the female too picks us few twigs of aquatic weeds. There is an exchange of the weeds as a token of love. The display is so energetic that the birds rise out of the water and make interesting splashes.

Canon 40D , Canon 500mm +1.4x , ISO 800, Wimberly head on monopod,
1/750 at f 8.0 , evaluative metering -1/3

Cheers,
Saleel Tambe
East Croydon, Surrey, UK
www.saleeltambe.com

[Geoff Warnock]

great to see this behaviour caught so nicely Saleel.

[Katie Rupp]

I would really love to see this behavior someday! The watersplash perfectly underscores the excitement of the "dance."

[Arthur Morris]

It's great to have you back. Spectacular action here and so sharp. Looks a bit dark in the mid-tones. I love the pose of the rear bird and the spread crest. Bad luck with some of the dead vegetation in the BKGR.

Where were you when you made the image?

[Gavin Spooner]

A beautiful bird I have missed since moving stateside. Nice water action and behavioural action. The slightly left of center framing makes the image feel a little unbalanced. maybe a central placement with this kind of action.

I need to try the wimberley on a monopod, it sounds interesting.

cheers
Gavin

[Arthur Morris]

With all due repsect, a Wimberely on a monopod makes zero sense to me.... Zero :) (I missed that....)

[saleeltambe]

With all due repsect, a Wimberely on a monopod makes zero sense to me.... Zero :) (I missed that....)

Many thanks Artie for your feedback #1 and #2. Also thanks to all others. Its always a pleasure to be back on BPN after a gap.

Regarding using Wimberly with monopod ( Artie's #2 point) - Honestly speaking - even I was quite apprehensive in the begining and fully agree with Artie that it does not make much point to use a wimberly with monopod.

BUT,
What I always found that When I attach my 500+1.4x combo on a monopod directly via the tripod collar - it restricts the upwardly and downwardly swivel / turn movement quite a lot.

Instead if I attach a wimberly on a monopod, the manouvering of the lens become much easier for me and helps me especially if I have to quickly point the lens up or down or to follow a BIF path. Otherwise its quite difficult to turn the lens up or down by a sharp angle because the tripod feet can't be flexible enough for sharp angles.

Not sure how much it makes sense to everyone - but to me it is a lot more convenient and flexible !

cheers,
Saleel Tambe
www.saleeltambe.com

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks a ton Saleel. As I have never used a monpod, I am the student here. What puzzles me is that stability is not adversely affected. Do you also lock the head before shooting? Do you set a fairly firm tension? Do see the safari mount thread in Photo Gear. In fact, I will copy some of this to that thread and hope that you can respond there. Will post a link if I am successful :)

[Arthur Morris]

Saleel. I was somewhat successful. I merged the relevant comments from above here:

http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...168#post590168

It is in the middle of the thread and I combined all of the comments into one Pane or else they would have been disjointed. I invited you to comment there and educate us all.