Bass Rock.

[timg]

Went to Bass rock for the morning and afternoon, on Tuesday. It was a big gamble with the weather but thankfully everything turned out great and went ahead as planned.

A totally amazing experience, the largest Gannet colony on the planet, described by David Attenborough as one of the wild wonders of the world..

Upon landing it was extremley overwhelming, like the Farne islands but on a far grander scale. After a while I got to work on some of the birds, mainly short lenses used (17-40 + grad, 70-200, occasionally 300 F2.8) 5D and MkIII bodies.

Despite the Gannets being very large, they are actually very friendley and entertaining!

1 - Courtship

2

3 - Preening

4 - more courtship

5

6

7

8 - A Shag practising its Kung Fu, taken whilst sitting on the edge of the Helipad on the way back to the boat.

 

[Pirate Neilsouth]

WOW WOW!!! , but 5 - 6 - 7 blew me away

 

[TrevDR]

Fantastic set of images

 

[EdinburghGary]

Jeses I had no idea bass rock was such a unique photo op!!! WOW

Awesome set, you should be very proud of these. Awesome stuff.

G.

 

[wobblebottom]

Fantastic set of images

Abolutely stunning set of shots, beautifully processed.

Well done

 

[crieffy]

Blimey! Beautiful! Loving number 4, and those wide-angle ones are stunning. I'm gonna have to get my arse to the colonies here before they all go..

Thanks for sharing,

John

 

[cason]

amazing set, well done
cas

 

[chris321]

That's an absolutely incredible set, I really can't even pick out favourites, they're all absolutely bind blowing! One day I'll be able to get shots that good, one day.....

Chris

 

[Bikemansteve]

wow, wow and wow again - I'd have wet myself with excitement if I got a bunch of shots like those.........

 

[Chris Green]

Fantastic photo's. 2, 5 & 6 for me.

I love them all though.

 

[Cobra]

Great set but the "courtship" ones are my favourites
And at the shag pose and title

 

[IanC_UK]

really love the wide images Tim the close images are stunning too

 

[Lateralus]

nice pics-beautiful eyes on those birds

 

[Busby]

it's all been said...Stunning.

 

[erding]

Fabulous set - couldn't pick a fav at all.

Tom

 

[Jayst84]

Belting set, 2&6 are super.

 

[lammie]

A brilliant set of shots. Like the lot of them, well done.

 

[Venomator]

A really excellent collection of images Tim ... ... one can almost smell the bird poop from just looking at that lot they are an awesome set ... :thmubs: ... the Gannet close-ups are out of this world imhgo ...

 

[BRASH]

Just ace. Fantastic compositions, colours and quality.

 

[grumpybadger]

Great set. I was at Bass a couple of weeks back, it really is a fantastic place.

Great light on the "beak rubbing" shot in 2 but I think I would have been tempted to clone out all the OOF airbourne gannets - they look a bit like specular highlights

 

[Scotty]

Stunning series of shots

 

[timg]

Thanks for all the great comments guys!

The Gannets are lots of fun, although smelly they're great birds.

I've got a lot of shots from the "Chumming" which was basically where they throw unwanted catch off the boat and you attempt to photograph the resulting invasion, which is more like space invaders than photography. The gannets line up and dive into the water like long skewers, amazing to watch.