Hi Ian,
Getting to South Georgia must be an amazing experience, particularly if you got to do it in some degree of comfort (unlike the British troops in the 1980's or more recently Tim Jarvis, who made the trip in a row boat!).
What is worth remembering though is that regardless of the location, or the conditions at the time, the basics of good photography remain constant.
With this photograph we have a classic sub-Antarctic opportunity. Hundreds of penguins, penguin chicks and snow. The one thing that lets this image down though is the background.
Take a look at the image. We see the two chicks in the foreground, we see the mature adults in the background, but what lets the image down for me are the two out of focus brown smudges in the picture. One in the lower left and the other just behind the right chick.
Without these two elements, the photograph would be stunning. But while they are there I find them to be too distracting.
Now what to do next time? Well, the first option might be to look for a situation where the scene is cleaner. Another option might be to use a smaller aperture and get a better depth-of-field (at least then those brown smudges start to take on more definition and interest).
My preferred option though, would be to get on your stomach and shoot upwards at these two chicks. That would not only drop the two distracting birds in the background our of shot, but it would also change the relationship between the adults and the chicks. Remember that these adults pretty much put these chicks ahead of themselves in this stage of their life, so making the chicks taller in the picture than these adults is not a bad thing.
I hope you get another opportunity to revisit the southern latitudes.
Cheers,
Anthony
Oakum Boys
