MAIACETUS: sunrise

Showing posts with label sunrise. Show all posts

Sunday, June 1, 2014

June 1, 2014: North Sea Sunrise

365 Project, Day 197

Here is my day 197 submission to my 365Project:

Ahhh, sunrise in the North Sea...always so inspiring to start the day with.

One of the support vessels traveling close by

Friday, May 30, 2014

May 30, 2014: North Sea Minke Whale

365 Project, Day 195

Here is my day 195 submission to my 365Project:

It was another lovely day in the North Sea today! In fact it was one of our best days yet with 13 marine mammal sightings; 1 common seal sighting (harbour seal, phoca vitulina), five grey seal sightings (Halichoerus grypus), 2 harbour porpoise sightings (Phocoena phocoena), 4 minke whale sightings (Baleanoptera acutorostrata) and 1 white-beaked dolphin (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) sighting. Today's photo is of one of the minke whales that passed quite close to the ship just as I was finishing my watch...fortunately I hadn't put my camera away yet and I snapped a few shots of it cruising by :)

An here are some shots of a leaping white-beaked dolphin, the sunrise and the second officer shooting off flares at a ship that was approaching us. Due to the multiple cables towed behind our vessel we are restricted in our ability to move and vessels must maintain a good distance from us. Finally, after trying to reach the ship for 45 minutes and setting off the flares the vessel responded and altered course! You just never know what's going to happen out here from day to day!

Saturday, May 17, 2014

May 17, 2014: Here Comes The Sun

365 Project, Day 189

Here is my day 189 submission to my 365Project:

Even thought I've taken so many sunrise photos I just can't stop!

Gotta love those offshore sunrises...gorgeous!

Some more scenes from this morning's watch; photos of the moon, sunrise, a Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica) in flight, a close pass by Breagh platform and a nearly mature Lesser Black-backed Gull (Larus fuscus, I think?):

Barn Swallow (Hirundo rustica)

A close pass by Breagh platform

Our barovane aka paravane (which keeps the seismic array spread) passing very close to Breagh platform

Possible 3rd year juvenile Lesser Black Backed Gull (Larus fuscus)

Friday, May 16, 2014

May 16, 2014: Feeling Moon-ey

365 Project, Day 188

Here is my day 188 submission to my 365Project:

Today I think I was able to capture a somewhat better image of the moon in the wee hours of the morning than I did on yesterday or the day before. I'll probably forget the settings by the time I try to do this again but that's the wonderful thing about digital, you have many opportunities to play with settings and capture the shot you're hoping for!

The one thing I needed to figure out is why I'm getting posterization, or banding, in these images? It isn't so bad in my photo of the day but you'll see in this next photo that it's there...there are distinct bands of colour around the moon. According to this webpage the basic gist of it seems to be that these shots, which inclue areas of little detail, are posterized because they were shot in JPEG fine format and not Raw format. There is too little info spread too far apart in the JPEG image thus creating the blocky banding seen here.

I have indeed heard in my path of learning photography that it's best to shoot in Raw, especially for post processing purposes including the cropping I've done here. I've gone through my phases of shooting in Raw and I understand there is much more information in a Raw format photos; the only thing is Raw files are just such big files and require even more time for post processing! Oh well, looks like I'll be shooting Raw next time I want to photograph the moon and, although it'll take some more time to get the final result, there should be no posterization :)

Posterized moon

Breagh offshore platform

Sunrise over the barovane

Breagh sunrise

Breagh installation silhouetted at sunrise

Lone Common Guillemot (Uria aalge) aka Common Murre

Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus) taking off

Northern Gannet (Morus bassanus)

Thursday, May 15, 2014

May 15, 2014: Red Eyed Gaze

365 Project, Day 187

Here is my day 187 submission to my 365Project:

Birds, birds, birds...in the words of a guy a dated for a short while "Is that the blog you're writing about birds?". Birds? Birds? The blog is called Maiacetus which means Mother whale and states on the home page that the blog is about my life as a meandering whale nerd (not bird nerd!) Given the context of these recent blogposts though, you'd think that birds are what this blog is about... but it's supposed to be about my experiences working as a marine mammal observer and self proclaimed whale nerd. As you might have noticed there are not many whale photos in recent posts but that's only because it's the birds that have come close enough to actually be photographed recently!

Although I have a 70-200 mm lens with a 2x teleconverter (which makes the lens a 140-400 mm, less bright, lens) it's still tough to take good photos of marine mammals when they are usually more than a few hundred metres away. For example, the dolphins observed yesterday were 1200 metres away and remained officially 'unidentified'; given that most of the ones we have identified have been white-beaked dolphins (Lagenorhynchus albirostris) it's very likely that's which species they were. The only thing is that for our job we're not supposed to guess so unless you can say you definitely saw certain distinguishing features then it's best to record them as 'unidentified'. You never want to assume anything when you're a marine mammal observer or in marine mammal research!

Anyways, the point is...I'm taking lots of bird photos and today's photo is another shot of a Collared Dove (Streptopelia decaocto). This bird was hanging around the ship and I liked the photo showing it's big red eye keeping a wary lookout on me as I snapped it's photo. Here are some more pics...of the moon, sunrise and, big surprise... BIRDS!