Critique Bass Rock Landing Trip - 150,000 Gannets!

captures.in.time

captures.in.time

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I had a fantastic landing trip on the Bass Rock in East Lothian yesterday. The weather was a "Pea Souper!" You couldn't even see the rock from the coast when we departed! But once on the rock it was surprisingly calm and peaceful in the lee of the wind. I can only describe the experience as Amazing...a true spectacle of Mother Nature! I took the first half hour just to appreciate the scene and take it all in before rushing to get my camera out. Watching the behaviours and taking mental note of pics Id like to try and shoot.

It was my first real go at any sort of bird photography. The foggy conditions did not make it easy, especially for flying shots. Getting a high enough shutter speed to freeze the motion was tricky without just ramping the ISO up... which I don't generally like to do above ISO 400 ... This is probably a relic attitude of my film photography days. I'm sure a lesson to prob be learnt from yesterday is that I could shoot at higher ISO's with my 6d mkII and get perfectly acceptable results?

I also have a lot to learn about how much DOF you need as I rejected a lot of shots because I'd just gone too narrow! Eyes in focus but front of the beak blurred.

The focusing was really hard also! I'd only ever used Al Servo for motor sports photography which is a lot more predictable as the cars follow a set track... a lot of the time I lost potential shots by my camera just not finding the focus... not the cameras fault I hasten to add... lol... I found I had to work really hard and intensely trying to find initial focus... so any tips on that would be greatly appreciated.

So any tips, critique would be greatly appreciated!

1. WLF_031 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

2. WLF_034 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

3. WLF_042 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

4. WLF_043 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

5. WLF_047 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

6. WLF_051 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

7. WLF_054 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr

8. WLF_053 by Captures. in.time, on Flickr
 
quickly skimming through, my initial comment is that the framing could generally be a lot better - I would think that they are all crops so you probably have lots of canvas to play with
 
BillN_33 said:
quickly skimming through, my initial comment is that the framing could generally be a lot better - I would think that they are all crops so you probably have lots of canvas to play with
Click to expand...

Hey Bill.

Thanks for that... Yes most are crops... The reason for my crops are usually because I felt this was the best representation or that there was something else distracting in the shot. It was a fairly crowded hectic place... However maybe im wrong to have cropped so tight at times... I just felt that multiple birds and messy backgrounds where a detraction... can you maybe explain a bit more with examples of what you think doesn't work?
 
captures.in.time said:
Hey Bill.

Thanks for that... Yes most are crops... The reason for my crops are usually because I felt this was the best representation or that there was something else distracting in the shot. It was a fairly crowded hectic place... However maybe im wrong to have cropped so tight at times... I just felt that multiple birds and messy backgrounds where a detraction... can you maybe explain a bit more with examples of what you think doesn't work?
Click to expand...

There are basic "guidelines" for composition - just guidelines that are useful to start your composition with
here are just four
- the placement of the subject - generally not in the centre of the frame
- specifically, don't usually clip the wings off
- generally, give the subject room to fly or look into
- unless you are aiming for tight "portrait" crops, give some space around the image to show context

and many more general guidelines, common sense really

you've posted a lot of images, all different sizes? - do you start with "standard" sizes or just go for a "custom" size, i.e just crop freely in an unrestrained, (unconstrained), way
 
Last edited:
BillN_33 said:
There are basic "guidelines" for composition - just guidelines that are useful to start your composition with
here are just four
- the placement of the subject - generally not in the centre of the frame
- specifically, don't usually clip the wings off
- generally, give the subject room to fly or look into
- unless you are aiming for tight "portrait" crops, give some space around the image to show context

and many more general guidelines, common sense really

you've posted a lot of images, all different sizes? - do you start with "standard" sizes or just go for a "custom" size, i.e just crop freely in an unrestrained way
Click to expand...

I try to stick to the standard sizes but very often I find I want to clip a bit off so opt for free size. I get those rules and to be honest pretty much follow them... but yes 16 could have a little more fly room... and I guess I could recrop the images I clipped the wings... but looking at the originals I see why I did it... I was aiming for tight portrait crops with the tight crops to be honest.
 
Looks like a great day out. On the plus side it look like you have manage to keep the highlights always spot on which is not always easy with near white birds. But come on boy! You have a canon 6d mii, a full frame camera that only came out last year! I'm sure you can go way above the 400 iso mark without any problem! Even iso 3200, iso 6400 shouldn't be an issue if this way you get a good exposure. Don't be shy, when i had a canon 30D ten years ago i would try to stay below iso 640.
 
Lemaildetom said:
Looks like a great day out. On the plus side it look like you have manage to keep the highlights always spot on which is not always easy with near white birds. But come on boy! You have a canon 6d mii, a full frame camera that only came out last year! I'm sure you can go way above the 400 iso mark without any problem! Even iso 3200, iso 6400 shouldn't be an issue if this way you get a good exposure. Don't be shy, when i had a canon 30D ten years ago i would try to stay below iso 640.
Click to expand...

Hey... Thanks for your reply! It was fantastic... a unique experience!!!

I think the issue is that I learned my photography with film on a Pentax K1000 and shot on film for nearly 21 years... It took me a long time to convert to digital... my first being a Canon 5d mkI in 2009. I probably still think in film if that makes sense... so yeh when you got above ISO400 with film the prints you got where grainy! So I guess ive made the assumption that the digital cameras would mimic the effect of film and Im just realising that is not the case. However I guess it is still best to keep the ISO as low as you can go... So in reality in these conditions I should have been up at ISO800 or 1600?
 
Yes, 1600 is fine wuth a 5d3 so it should be fine with a 6d2. Possibly 3200.

In some ways the cloudy conditions have done you a favour. As tom says above bright sunshine can be a real problem with large white birds because the highlights blow out easily, and you also get problems with shadows which can be disruptive.

it looks like it was a great experience.
 
jerry12953 said:
Yes, 1600 is fine wuth a 5d3 so it should be fine with a 6d2. Possibly 3200.

In some ways the cloudy conditions have done you a favour. As tom says above bright sunshine can be a real problem with large white birds because the highlights blow out easily, and you also get problems with shadows which can be disruptive.

it looks like it was a great experience.
Click to expand...

It was a fantastic experience... and the more I've talked about it to people the more fantastic I think it was!!! Friends have been more enthusiastic than usual at looking at my images!

Yes I think harsh blue Skys would have been hard work... especially as much of the rock is also white with bird poop! You really would have needed sunglasses! I think I will take a trip round the rock in mid August when they will be at the peak of feeding their young... want to get shots of them diving into the water hopefully!

Thanks for your input and advice. I defo need to go out and shoot some test images at different ISO's higher than 400... which I've never actually shot past with this camera!
 
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