An elegant Forster’s Tern in flight – Nikon D200, handheld, f7.1, 1/750, ISO 200, Nikkor 80-400mm VR at 250mm, natural light
I’ve always loved this image of a Forster’s Tern in flight because the pose is wonderful and the tern looks elegant against the gray of a distant storm cloud. It also reminds me of a terrific morning spent photographing birds on the north beach of Fort De Soto during stormy weather and a day when bait fish were running in the shallow waves near the shore causing a massive feeding frenzy among pelicans, gulls and terns.
The problem with this image, before processing, was that the tern was very close to the bottom edge of the frame and it wrecked any chances for a pleasing composition. I couldn’t bring myself to delete the file so instead I added a touch of canvas to the bottom of the frame in post-processing. Typically I don’t add canvas or do much extra messing around in Photoshop but in this case I chose to do so to save the image from being tossed into my delete bin.
So this image may never be printed or published but I will still enjoy it.
Life is good.
Mia
Photo taken in January of 2009
Click here to see more of my Forster’s Tern photos plus facts and information about this species.
Thank you Patty, David, Kathie and EC, your comments mean much to me.
Echoing Patty.
Mia, you made a wise decision! I love this image!
ditto Patty’s comment. Tough getting those terns in flight shots!
I’m sure glad you had “the smarts” to make a minor adjustment to a beautiful images like this. What a terrible shame it would have been not to! What you did was to capture and restore what you saw.