Shooting Gulls and Dolphins from a Boat

Nancy and I, along with Nancy's daughter and a friend of hers, spent 2 hours and 40 minutes on a local Dolphin and Whale Watching boat last weekend. (It was to be a 3 hour trip, but we left 20 minutes late, with no explanation or apology. I was also told at the ticket booth that day that the trip would be primarily for large whales, not dolphins. However, we spent 30-40 minutes looking for large whales - without success - while the rest of the time was spent with the dolphins.) As is typical at this time of year at Cape May, NJ, Laughing and Herring Gulls followed the boat to see if its propellers dislodged anything they could eat. As a result, we had an opportunity to shoot these species in flight at near eye level against a fairly uniform sky.

The significance of the sky is that autofoucsing on birds in flight is best against a featureless background, and this sky afforded that. I was using a Canon 7D camera with a Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 lens. I set the camera's focus for "Ring of Fire" which includes all 19 of the potential focus points. I also, via a custom function, had moved the autofocus from the shutter button to the middle of the three buttons on the upper right of the back of the camera. The reason for this is that I can recompose an image after I have acquired focus and not have that focus changed by my pressing the shutter button.

Another consideration in such situations is to add a stop of light, perhpas more, to the reading the exposure meter suggests. The reason for this is that the meter wants to make the bright sky a mid-tone by cutting off the amount of light reaching the sensor. In turn, this will make the subject, which is not as bright as the sky, that much darker. This is compensated for by adding a stop of light or so via exposure compensation. Just be certain to check your histogram to see that you have achieved a good exposure. Also remember to ETTR (expose to the right).

Exposing to the right is warranted because, in general, an optimum digital exposure is acheived by adding the amount of light to the image necessary to cause the histogram to be as far right as possible without hitting the right edge. This will often cause the image on the LCD screen on the back of the camera to blink allegedly indicating an over-exposure. However, that image is a JPEG and given that you are shooting in RAW (if you are at all serious about your work), the LCD image will be misleading.

I have heard photographers say that they don't try to shoot birds in flight because they do not have image stabilized lenses. This shows a lack of understanding of the situation. When shooting birds in flight, you pan the lens with the bird. As a result, image stabilization is not relevant. (As an aside, I always leave my image stabilization on as it does no harm when not needed.)

The problem with creating good images of dolphins, in this case the Atlantic Bottlenose Dolphin, is that you do not have enough time to 1) see them come up to breathe, 2) find them in your camera, 3) focus on them, and 4) take the shot before they are back under water. As a result, most dolphin images show, at best, the back or tail of a submerging dolphin.

The ideal situation is to have the sun at your back and a group of dolphins at the surface in front of you. Set your ISO high enough so that yu can shoot at a fairly fast shutter speed, and set you camera to its fastest continuous shooting mode. Then, when a pod surfaces, focus and shoot as fast as you can. On this trip, I shot over 300 dolphin images, and was lucky enough to get 2 good ones.

As you can surmise, this may not be an efficient way to photograph, but it is the best way I know to increase the likelihood of capturing the shot you want. After all, with the price of pixels being what it is, just keep shooting. (I consider it a good day when I have created 1 or 2 high quality keepers.) The trick is to have a large capcity, high speed CF card, and these are now readily available. For example, I recently bought a 32 GB, 600x CF card for $175.00.

The bottom line is to know your equipment thoroughly, properly set your camera's exposure based on its histogram (not on the JPEG image on the LCD screen), have a fast large capacity card in your camera, and shoot, shoot, shoot! Once you are comfortable with these techniqes, you can use them for other species in similar situations.