Dive bomb Booby

Took me a week to get two sharp shots of a pre-diving Booby....

Somewhere in the Galapagos, not the same bird!

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HOLY COW! The second shot makes it look like a spear!

WOW, those are excellent...

Cheers. About 2 feet before hitting the water everything gets tucked in....like a needle...I have deleted lots of shots of splashes

Fantastic catch(s)! The background on the 1st is spectacular.

Wow, that is amazing. Looks like a dart or spear getting ready to cut through to it's target. Awsome work keeping up with this shot Neil!

wow! i think that second shot is amazing! he does look like spear or a dart...very good capture.

Can you share some of your settings? I am specifically curious how you managed to get the bird so sharp when it is off center. What focus points did you use?

When I attempt something like this, my pictures usually end up with the background shape the the bird OOF.

Wow, they dive just like there cousin Gannets! Amazing shots!

Hope you don't mind a link to some very poor quality shots of a gannet dive sequence;
http://newfoundland.fo​topic.net/c402761.html

In both cases, the transformation that they go through is simply amazing.. these ungainly looking birds on land, are excellent flyers, but even so, even in flight, one would not imagine the missile like shapes they achieve when diving.

Again, fantastic shots!

Will have to dig out the raw to get the settings but I was using One Shot focud mode as servo always seemed to focus on the sea...100-400 not fast enough on a 5D. Eventually one dove stright, not towards me, not away....bingo

Cheers guys, Gannets are a bit low Q but well done getting anything!

That is simply impressive!

OMG!! Those are totally awesome! The second one looks like a lawn dart!!!! Amazing images!!!

I would crop in from the right side a bit on that first one, but It's still a killer shot. I had no idea boobies (sp?) could dive that aggressively.

That is a Amazing Capture!!!

Fantastic captures showing this birds amazing diving skills...I wonder if boobies were ever trained for combat?..