Black-Bellied Plover (Pulling hard)

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Took a recent trip to Little Estero Lagoon in Ft Meyers Beach, FL and found this BBP pulling on something out of the sand. Never seen this before and I was able to get a couple of images of the action. Once the BBP pulled it out, a laughing gull came in and took it. :)

Nikon d300s | 500 f/4 VR | @ 500mm
Manual Exposure | 1/640" | f/4 | ISO 320
Camera mounted on ball head and DIY ground pod (metal plate + frisbee)

Note: Image is straight out of camera. No edits at all. I have done a couple of adjustments to a virtual copy, but wanted to get your take on it. I like it quite a bit out of camera. I find the background pleasing, although there could be a bit more contrast on the bird. I think there might be a small color cast (blue), that I will want to remove. Feel free to take the image and play with it. Otherwise, comments and advice are welcomed and appreciated!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8446/7845252858_5e9b071405_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpalaviccini/7845252858/)

[gail bisson]

This brought a smile to my face.
I wish for more room on the RHS.
Definitely needs a tweek in levels and boost in saturation while getting rid of blue cast.
I would also crop from the bottom to get rid of OOF sand and give it a pano feel which would compliment the " stretching action and bring the diagonal line of worms body closer to LLC,
Gail

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Miguel, good behaviour captured here, and cant think or make out what the BB Plover is pulling out the sand. Your low angle of capture works well.Yes to a touch of contrast, and good points from Gail to crop up from the bottom and add a touch to the right.

[Randy Stout]

Miguel:

Fun image, like the tug of war. Would be fun to actually have enough width to show the worms end still in the sand. Good advice from above. Image has good potential, needs a bit of polishing to bring its best out.

Cheers

Randy

[Marina Scarr]

Great action/behavior you captured here. For final presentation, I would give it a tad more room on the right (if you have it) and a crop off the bottom. This must have been fun to photograph.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Thanks for the input! I can add some room to the right. I'll also crop a bit from the bottom, add some contrast, fix the minor color cast ... and then I'll repost it here.

Randy - I agree, and I wish I would have been further back. Unfortunately, I couldn't zoom and I didn't have the time to move back. This all happened within 5-10 seconds.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Mmm, a large plump and juicy marine worm on the menu! Love the action, and I actually like the worm stretching out of the frame. The image has lots of potential as a "final product" as post processing is a very important step in photography...looking forward to see the polished version.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Thanks for all of the suggestions. Below is a processed version of the original. The steps are below:

Lightroom 4
- Used a the feathers from a portion by the leg to take the white balance. It removed the slight blue cast that I saw.
- Increased the highlights a bit to overexpose the background some more.

Photoshop CS6 w/ Nik Color Efex 4
- Added canvas to the right and filled it using content aware fill.
- Nik: Detail enhancer on the plover only (50% opacity)
- Nik: Tonal Contrast on plover only (30% opacity)
- Saturation adjustment layer +15 pts in saturation
- Cropped to 16:9 aspect ratio (removing some of the bottom OOF area) and downsized to 1000 px on the long edge
- Sharpened plover using Nik Sharpener (for display) at 25% opacity

Feel free to play with the original if you'd like. Let me know what you think about the processed version.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7121/7854278566_7f68e1ff0a_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mpalaviccini/7854278566/)