Salisbury Plain King Penguins 11

This is a photo is of juvenile king penguin chicks, which are also called “Oakum boys”. I created it while visiting Salisbury Plain on South Georgia Island in October 2012. My senses were completely over-loaded by the smells, sounds, and scale of the king penguin colony containing several hundred thousand penguins, as well as the grandeur of the landscape. It really is one of the most spectacular settings on Earth. These juveniles were very curious about me, mostly because they were getting hungry and must have thought that I looked enough like mom or dad that maybe I would offer them a free meal. I was focused on getting “the shot”, but it was hard while doubled-over laughing at the hilarious antics of the penguins hopping around, flapping their wings, and running into each other. I created this image using my Canon 5DmkIII, Canon 17-40mm f4 lens, Singh-Ray LB Warming polarizer & 2-stop Hard Graduated Neutral Density filter, and processed the RAW file using Aperture 3, Photoshop CS6, plus Nik Software’s Dfine 2.0 to remove noise & Color Efex 4‘s white balance filter.

Also, check out this image published in The Guardian.