Skimmers From Few Days Ago

It is that time of the year. Due to my trip back to Asia, I missed out on the babies and behavior shots.

Babies are now grown up and getting ready to fly. I hope to get able to get some learning how to fly soon.

Skimmers:
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-I like to go for the behavior shots.

Camera Nikon D700
Exposure 0.001 sec (1/1600)
Aperture f/5.6
Focal Length 600 mm
ISO Speed 320
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash


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Skimmer Chick - they are so big already. I missed out on the really young ones this year. I saw this cute one few days ago. I was 5.31m away, too close, therefore I decided to just focus on the head. Hope you like it!

Camera Nikon D700
Exposure 0.002 sec (1/500)
Aperture f/10.0
Focal Length 600 mm
ISO Speed 400
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash No Flash
Subject Distance 5.31 m

The chick look like the duck..... ... hahahah

Nice work

haha... Agree with Nelson. Thanks for sharing, Troy.

#2 look like duck.

They are lightning fast when they really want to fly.

Good skimmers images are tough to get:
1. Big contrast - when exposing these birds, since shooting at the beach, light constantly change especially in the summer with heavy clouds. So you have to adjust it often if you shoot in Manual mode.
2. They have a big wing span for a small bird, in flight shot is not easy. And they can fly really fast when they want to.
3. Getting all that and still get a catchlight in the eye, as it is black on black, with no catchlight, these birds will look dull or blind.

betul2 hor-liaooo

Superb shots as always!

Great exposure there, not an easy task at all on the white sand

Great to be able to get so close to the birds!

Do you have more photos of the chick like lower angle shots? I always dream to get very low angle shots of the waders/sea birds but it is not easy to close to the birds here