Landing flaps down

Gallery: AvianPosted August 24, 2010266 views16 comments

Sorry but it's another puffin photo.
I have photos of other birds, honest, but I just happen to love puffins.

Again, this was taken on the Island of Skomer in West Wales, UK.

This is one of the rare occasions that I actually fired off a burst of 2 frames (wow) lol, 99% of the time I shoot single frames, even for flight shots, not through choice, but my camera is very basic, only has the one central cross-hair and has a buffer of 4 RAWs before it grinds to a halt, so I have to "wait till I see the whites of their eyes" as they say, before I take my shot, this time I got lucky and both shots were usable.

It was coming in so close that I thought it was going to land on my lens.

Sony A350
Sigma 50-500 EX
1/2000th second
f8
ISO 200
330mm
-0.3 stop exposure compensation
Centre-weighted metering
Hand held
Continuous focussing

Feel free to comment, good or bad.

Geoff.

Comments

16 comments

Comment posted by Richard Teller on August 24, 2010 at 4:47 PM

I also really like Puffins. This is an unusual flight shot and I think it is great.

Registered on August 23, 2010, 1162 Posts, 6692 Comments

Comment posted by Ron Dudley on August 24, 2010 at 6:43 PM

Geoffrey, I like the unusual flight posture and really like the colors in the background. There seems to be a sharp, narrow halo around many of the darks of the bird and some unusual vertical streaking in the darker blues of the background.

Registered on March 30, 2007, 437 Posts, 10915 Comments

Comment posted by Geoffrey Baker on August 24, 2010 at 7:21 PM

Thanks guys

After looking very closely I can see what you mean Ron, the marks over the sea could well be noise? my CCD sensor shows up noise even at ISO 200, I can't remember now but I may have run this through noise reduction software.
The halos around the bird could be through sharpening? I used to sharpen globally at that time but now I mask off everything that I don't want to sharpen.
I haven't worked on the sea area and I didn't make any selection of the Puffin so I don't know what else it could be.

I wish my eyesight was as good as yours

Geoff.

Registered on August 20, 2010, 192 Posts, 980 Comments

Comment posted by Rashed Al Falasi on August 24, 2010 at 8:21 PM

this is really Amazing Geoffrey !

check my latest picture www.bindubai.deviantart.com/gallery

Registered on August 17, 2010, 1 Posts, 16 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on August 24, 2010 at 8:29 PM

Quite the pose - I've never seen a puffin shot anything like this.

The colors are very different between the small and large images on my Mac in the color-aware browser Safari. Reading the EXIf in the larger version indicates an unknown color space.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments

Comment posted by Angela McCain on August 24, 2010 at 10:45 PM

Don't be sorry. I love this. Puffins are great-at least I'm sure they would be if I ever got to see one. Not a lot of them here on the gulf coast. There are some technical issues, but the bird position, crop and color are great.

Registered on April 19, 2009, 367 Posts, 3589 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on August 24, 2010 at 11:30 PM

Excellent, Geoffrey. Wonderful detail and exposure and a great pose. Looks more like a "cannon ball" than a landing. Some of us would probably benefit greatly from the discipline imposed by the lack of machine-gun shooting (definitely myself included).

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Geoffrey Baker on August 25, 2010 at 7:42 AM

Thanks everyone

Taking the photos is the easy bit, it's the processing bit that I find most difficult.
As you've no doubt guessed, my Photoshop skills need a bit of refining, I tend to fumble my way through and I'm really grateful for any help and advice in that area.

Geoff

Registered on August 20, 2010, 192 Posts, 980 Comments

Comment posted by Soubhik Patranabis on August 25, 2010 at 10:50 AM

Never seen one in this posture - great capture ...

Registered on January 25, 2010, 54 Posts, 610 Comments

Comment posted by Darren Colello on August 25, 2010 at 12:13 PM

Sensational timing, love it.

Registered on July 27, 2009, 175 Posts, 1100 Comments

Comment posted by Lon Sharp on August 25, 2010 at 5:34 PM

He looks like he dropped off the high board, feet first!

Good capture.

Registered on December 9, 2007, 258 Posts, 9892 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on August 25, 2010 at 9:56 PM

Wow, now that is a great capture.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments

Comment posted by Satie Sharma on August 26, 2010 at 4:08 AM

Very cool, Geoff. It seems like the bird is about to pounce on something.

Registered on November 11, 2003, 189 Posts, 5335 Comments

Comment posted by Geoffrey Baker on August 26, 2010 at 7:27 AM

Thanks everyone, it's great to have comments from other photographers from all over the World, I'm honoured