Northern Gannet

[Cathy McEntee]

This was taken MLK day. There were a lot of gulls feeding on bait fish in the ocean--this guy was on the periphery watching. Thanks for looking. C&C appreciated.

Nikon D7000
Sigma 150-500 @ 500mm
ISO 400 f 7.1 1/2500
manual exposure

[Joel Eade]

Beautiful bird and beautiful water.

I am not seeing much detail in plumage...could be the whites are over-exposed a little. You might be able to recover these more in photoshop. It's tricky exposing whites against a darker BG.

The area wth sharpest focus appears to be the tail feathers, do you recall if you had selected a single focus point or used all of them? If possible you should attempt to focus on the eye/head usually.

You may not have had a choice on this one but it would have been better if the bird was angled slightly toward you rather than away.

[Cathy McEntee]

Hi Joel - thanks for your critique. I know the angle is not optimal, but I was thrilled to get a fairly sharp shot. We only see gannets offshore, usually at least 1/2 mile. Every time we've spotted them there is a pretty good chop on the water--very frustrating as I would love just a few minutes of the boat being fairly still to get a great shot. This is my ultimate challenge this winter. Will try to get more detail from the whites. I thought I was focused on the head--but very likely with all the motion when the shutter was pressed, it wasn't.

[pat lillich]

Cathy, what a gorgeous bird!!! the eye looks really sharp to me, I'm wondering if when you get more detail in the whites if that might fix that perception. hope you will post the results of tweaking the white...

[Don Railton]

Hi Cathy

Agree with above and think this is definitely worth working to get the detail. Please post any update..

Thanks

DON

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Cathy, don't know if you can reclaim the whites from the capture - might be lost. I also feel that there is a lack of detail in the image but not sure why? Shutter speed is high enough, maybe your camera didn't catch focus? As for composition, I would like to have more space in front even though the bird is swimming out of the frame. It would be exciting to me to capture a gannet at all!

[Cynthia Thayer]

I agree, what a great looking bird. :) My only concern is, as previously mentioned, the bright tones in the bird. This is a situation which gives many a photographer fits. The meter in the camera gets very confused. I find that ween shooting white birds, metering with a spot meter usually works best. What goes thru my mind in this situation is getting the proper exposure for the bird, as this is what I want my audience to look at. That's not to say the water isn't important, it's just not the main subject. Congrats on getting this shot. I would be very excited to see one of these guys too. :)

[Cathy McEntee]

Thanks all. I've worked with the image some more and was able to get a bit more detail. Am waiting to try new software on the image before I repost.