Plover Strolling

[Lyle Gruby]

Shot this at the very end of a long day of shooting down in TX. Tried High Island Rookery but it was too early in the year. I made it to the coast with 20 minutes of daylight left. Just laid on the beach and this plover came running. This is almost FF except a small comp for composition. I'm not confident in my shorebird ID, but I believe this is a snowy--please correct me if I'm wrong. All C&C welcome.

Techs:
D7000
200-400 with 1.4 @ 550mm HH
f/5.6
1/800
ISO 800

[Randy Stout]

LYLE;

Nice evening light, excellent shooting perspective, which helps make the connection with the bird more intimate, and throws some of the clutter on the beach OOF.

Nice catchlight. I could see a version with a bit of crop from above, because of the strong sense of implied motion to the right from pose, personal taste.

I am getting the sense of some subtle chroma noise in the upper background, possibly from the jpeg compression.

Cheers

Randy

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Lyle, good low angle, and I like the walking pose. I agree with Randy to take some off the top, and Im finding the overall image a little dark.

[vishaljadhav]

Lyle,

I may like the image to be brighten up a bit , it looks over all a bit too dark

Please do not mind this question of mine as its a bit odd for me to understand the catchlight in here, the catch light is super sharp and pin point when the whole frame is dark it some how defeats my logic, have you got this as natural catchlight or is there any post work done to the original, in such a situation i expected a more uniform catchlight
I may be completely wrong here , however your answer will help me learn it better.

I like the sharpness of the image and the walking pose, brightening up the image can make this look far nicer than it is

[PhilCook]

Well done/stalked getting this close to fill the frame, good detail and liking the oof sand and backdrop, to me it is a little dark and could do with some noise reduction to the backdrop

[dankearl]

I think brightening it a bit would look nice and definitely needs another round of NR,
but nice light and angle.

[Lyle Gruby]

Lyle,

I may like the image to be brighten up a bit , it looks over all a bit too dark

Please do not mind this question of mine as its a bit odd for me to understand the catchlight in here, the catch light is super sharp and pin point when the whole frame is dark it some how defeats my logic, have you got this as natural catchlight or is there any post work done to the original, in such a situation i expected a more uniform catchlight
I may be completely wrong here , however your answer will help me learn it better.

I like the sharpness of the image and the walking pose, brightening up the image can make this look far nicer than it is


Thanks all for the comments. I guess its time to buy a screen calibration tool. I've gotten too many comments about strange colors and exposure that seems off compared to what I'm seeing. I'm open to suggestions for a calibration tool for a 27inch last generation iMac. Vish-- the catchlight is 100% natural. The sun was extremely low when I took this. There probably weren't 10 minutes left before the sun was completely below the horizon. I'm not sure what you're seeing as strange though? All I did with the image was crop a tiny bit after I leveled it and, I cloned out a few bright rocks.

[vishaljadhav]

Thanks Lyle,

Its that we shoot in very different geographies and the light conditions are varied due to that, the catchlight was the brightest of the spots in the image is what was strange to me, however it can be that the black reflected the light more and thats why it got so bright compared to the image, thanks for the clarification helps me understand better.

[Daniel Cadieux]

A bit dark as noted, and I find that the image needs a bit more sharpening for web presentation (and yes to some NR too). Love the walking pose, warm evening light, and I like the crop as is. Neat beach floor too with all the pebbles.

[Tim King]

It's dark in all the right ways. Nice late light on the whites. Fine job.