Saturday, April 2, 2011

Gulls Feeding, Monterey Bay

We set up with the Nikon 500mm, 1.4 Tele and the D7000 close to the rocky shore to shoot an experimental series while making fine-tuning adjustments on the camera focus settings with the goal of maximizing focus sharpness of the shots.
This immature Gull was first on the scene having spotted this giant chunk of food that he had to himself for a few minutes. The gull made an ideal subject for the focus experiments - close enough and with good feather detail.
It is unfortunate that the Blog format to the right "clips" the photos. We'll try to revise the format.

The immature gull was soon replaced by a pair of adult Western Gulls that displayed unusual sharing behavior - they don't usually share their food. We gather the food supply was adequate for both. The immature gull watched from a nearby rock.

The pair was close enough to shore that breaking waves sometimes interrupted the feast. In fact, they lost their delicacy for a while. Where did it go?

One gull went under in an attempt to retrieve the food.

Successful, the remaining gull had a few more bites - then the food sank and drifted away. We like the feather detail in this shot.

The gulls gave us good subject material for the focus adjustments. We are close to establishing the optimum settings. More testing will be needed but we're satisfied with the results so far.

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