Killdeer Encounter

[Henry Domke]

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Walking through a recently burned 5-acre prairie this afternoon I heard the alarm call of a Killdeer. The bird was repeating “Kill Deer, Kill Deer” over-and-over as it flew in semi-circles around me. I suspect it was trying to distract me so that I would not find it’s chicks. I quickly snapped a few pictures and left it alone. The image I plan to print has more sky showing but I cropped the image for display here.

Canon 5D3
600 f/5 II
Hand held and on a tripod. I think this one was hand held.
ISO 1,600
1/4,00 of a second
f/13
Processed in Lightroom 4 and Photoshop CS6

[arash_hazeghi]

nice to track one of these fast fliers, I like the eye contact as well as near wing position, pity he had already passed you a bit. overall a bit too tight in the frame.

image is a bit soft and noisy. f/13 1/400sec is not the right setting for flight, shutter speed way too low. f/4 1/3200sec would have given you a sharp photo.

[Henry Domke]

1/400sec is not the right setting for flight, shutter speed way too low. f/4 1/3200sec would have given you a sharp photo.
Typo on my part. Shutter speed was 1/4,000th not 1/400th

It is tight in the frame because I cropped it for this website. As I wrote, I plan to leave more blue sky around the bird when I print it.

[Barry Ekstrand]

Killdeer are a favorite of mine, but I've never photographed one in flight. I like the wing position and head angle very much, a shot to feel really good about. How did you process in LR and CS6 with respect to noise reduction and sharpening?

Barry

[David Salem]

Nice job catching this Killdeer in flight. Nice down wing pose. I agree that the shot looks a bit noisy and grainy. Maybe loosen up the crop a bit too.

[arash_hazeghi]

1/4000sec makes sense. the softness/noise might be a processing issue then if the RAW was sharp.

[vishaljadhav]

Henry
i looked at the image and it seems that while posting you left the Resolution in the Image size setting to 240 instead of the ideal of 72 may give some issues sometimes.
I did a fast rework on the same image since i felt that you have a wonderful image here and from the original you will be able to churn out a fantastic repost, felt it needed some space around and added it and some noise around so reduced it and added sharpening to the image after NR this is the output
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[Satish Ranadive]

Beautiful flight shot with nice display of near wings and nice HA.
Rest is mentioned by Arash.

Regards,
Satish.

[Satish Ranadive]

I was writing while, Vishal has re posted the image,definitely it look very nice,still it has got noise on near wing.

Regards,
Satish.

[Karl Egressy]

This species looks very nice in flight. I like the original, like the repost by Vishal better. The near wing pose and the eye contact are very nice.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Vishal, why would the resolution (240 vs 72) have anything to do with how it looks on here? I'm curious! ;)

[arash_hazeghi]

Vishal, why would the resolution (240 vs 72) have anything to do with how it looks on here? I'm curious! ;)

no dpi is only for printing, it has nothing to do with how image is displayed.