Great Skua Displaying + Repost

This is another great skua shot from the other night. I was trying to get some good ones of them doing this wing-raise display. Its not quite what I want, but I'm pretty happy with it, and I've got time for plenty more goes when the light's good!

Canon EOS 30D
Canon 300 f/4 L IS
ISO 400
1/1600 at f/6.3

RAW (as always) with minimal processing in Lightroom and Elements.
Cropped to roughly 60% of original size.

Good shot Adam, i've never seen one of these. No nits here.

This is nice, like the attitude, good one.

Tim

Hi Adam,

Awesome, simply awesome image! Fantastic detail!

Excellent capture and pose Adam. A shame though that the background divides the frame right across the centre of the action. As you mentioned you may have other opportunities then perhaps a slightly different viewpoint could give you an either (grass) or (sea) background. Still a fascinating shot of a bird I also have never seen.
Robert

Well caught Adam

Agree with Robert, regarding the dividing line, but a fine result!

Alan

I agree with the above, definitely room for improvement! I'll see what I can do and post the results here...

Thanks for all the comments!

Hi Adam,
This is an really good behavioural shot of an unusual subject, With the bg being comparatively dull, I think maybe a larger aperture would have helped make the bird stand out even better, and I agree with everybody else about the horizon cutting through the bird.
Still a fine shot though.
Eric

Hi Adam,

I agree with what's already been said about the background intersecting the main subject, but in my mind it's a relatively minor nit.

Cheers,

Dan.

The main nit has been covered, but an interesting behavioral image and I look forward to more....

Classic Bonxie wingstretch pose.

I think you could drop the exposure brightness by half to 3/4stop, the bird looks a bit washed out on my screen. My memories of Bonxie are that they are deeper chocolate brown, this seems to be more arctic skua mid brown in colour and the underwing flashes are on the verge of blowing, they should be creamier than this.

If you were using full EV metering, the exposure may have been influenced by the blue sea in the background being about 50% of the frame, it looks a touch bright at present? a dark sea would result in over-exposure as the metering system tries to compensate and make it a more neutral grey tone

Mike

Thanks for your comments. Mike, I see what you mean and I've taken the exposure down by -0.57 in Lightroom, which seems about right on my monitor. Does this seem better? I'll try to get some more soon with a better background too!

Adam

Nice behavioural image. I have never seen the species, but on my screen the repost looks a little too dark. I would consider cropping in a bit closer to bring more attention to the bird and remove some of the slightly distracting OOF foreground, and maybe moving the bird a bit more off-centre to the left.

Hi Adam,

More feather detail has been brought out in the repost but it does appear a touch too dark on my monitor!

Brightness wise this is about perfect on two LCD screens I've now viewed it on (Home and work)- so I'm not too sure where the darkness comments are coming from??, but there is a redish cast - not sure if it is the lighting conditions or a WB problem.

Adjusting the black point in eye from 15,4,0 to 0,0,0 results in coloration of my repost - which I think makes grass more natural??your exposure tweak has resulted in better subject tones and feather detail

Mike

Yes, I think that does look better! I set WB to auto as I shoot in RAW, then adjust it in Lightroom.I normally just do it by judgement with the sliders, but that looks like a better technique and I'll use that next time (and to get this one right!). Thanks again for comments.

Adam