Albatross Courtship, a photo from South Georgia Island, Other

Photographer's Note

The courtship dance of Wandering Albatrosses on Prion Island, one of the small islands in the Bay of Isles. South Georgia Island can be seen across the bay in the background.

The Wandering Albatross is the largest of the albatrosses and is the living bird with the greatest wingspan, measuring almost 3.5 m. The body length is up to 1.35 m, with females slightly smaller than males. It gets its name because it is a great traveler - it sometimes spends several months in the air, over the southern oceans, without ever touching land.
The life history of the wandering albatross is similar to our own: birds mature at about 12 years of age, spend many adolescent years socialising and courting, mate for life, breed infrequently and might live for more than 60 years. They lay a single egg at a time, which takes about 78 days to hatch.

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quino, jp80, dt2chow heeft deze opmerking als nuttig gemarkeerd

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jp80 (8443) 2005-02-15 12:32

Freedom ! He seems like beeing hapy comtemplating this great landscape. Very nice shot David, the DOF is good here, just ad colors. Well done !

Pascal

karan (42) 2005-02-15 13:02

Gr8 pic....it looks so good with all the grass and all with white snow at back

fooeleen (713) 2005-02-15 14:24

David, this looks superb - the sharpness, the colors and the movements. the background setting looks so picturesque and romantic. and also thanks for the wonderful note too.

dt2chow (83) 2005-11-03 21:53

I hate it when wonderful pictures don't get the points they deserved. Thanks for sharing your rare captures (not every one get to go to South Georgia Island. ;)

Good composition and a great moment. There is good sense of depth between the foreground and the back. Did you fuzz out the background in post processing? The grass blades-water section on the right looks a little odd.

aspiringamateur (151) 2006-04-04 9:01

Wow, what a special moment to witness! Love the composition, but unfortunately the overwhelmingly bright snow/sun has washed out the colors. Try adding contrast--that might help. Still, it's a wonderful capture! This is what traveling is all about.
Whitney

jls24 (11) 2008-03-24 15:37

This must have been a beautiful place to visit. I love how the white snowy mountains coordinate so well with the white color of the albatrosses. Also very cool how the fog acts as almost a natural way to keep the background out of focus enough to maintain attention on the birds. My only point of negative criticism would be that the foreground (birds and grass) seem too contrasted. The white on the birds is almost to the point of losing some detail. Or was that how it actually looked in real life?