Northern Gannet , Morus bassanus, Fou de Bassan Bonaventure Island, Quebec ©Christopher Dodds www.chrisdoddsphoto.com Canon EOS 1DMKIII, 70-200mm F2.8 Lens @ 125mm ISO 500, F3.2, 1/2000s Manual, Canon 580EXII Flash full power in manual mode.
The single hardest thing to do at Bonaventure Island is stop photographing the action and work on static portraits. Action is non-stop; since they can't easily take flight without wind, action at the colony increases proportional to the wind velocity; on a really wet and windy day, it’s almost incredible!
I've been up at the colony in the fog many times, and am amazed at the amount of times I've seen photographers (amateur and professional alike) either sitting, waiting for the weather to improve, or simply just leave. After photographing for an hour and seeing the almost white images on the LCD screen on the back of his camera, a professional photographer declared that it is impossible to make any decent images and that I must be nuts (well, he wasn't far from the truth calling me "nuts" - smile). Always trust the histogram and use the actual image preview for checking sharpness and composition (not exposure; that's what the histogram is for). Here's the secret: Fog is like a huge diffuser; it's like a huge light source. The larger the light source, the lower the contrast. Properly exposed images captured in the fog have a histogram that is all bunched-up against (but not touching) the right side of the histogram, and we need to spread that data out during post capture processing. In Photoshop, just slide the left slider during your Levels adjustment; sliding it towards the middle darkens the blacks that are missing in the raw data: the more you move towards the middle, the more you remove the foggy appearance of your image. Be careful not to go too far.
Northern Gannet landing in the pouring rain, Morus bassanus, Fou de Bassan Bonaventure Island, Quebec ©Christopher Dodds www.chrisdoddsphoto.com Canon EOS 1DMKIII, 70-200mm F2.8 Lens @ 125mm ISO 500, F2.8, 1/2000s Manual, Canon 580EXII Flash full power in manual mode.
We spend a lot of money for fast lenses, so don't be afraid to use them. Even a large subject like a Northern Gannet stays sharp from wingtip to wingtip when it is flying towards you. Here, I used an aperture of F2.8 to help make the vegetation in the background out of focus and to make the heavy rain almost invisible.