Semipalmated Plover.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I was pleasantly surprised when an adult Semipalmated Plover showed up a couple of days ago. I see this species a lot during fall migration, but almost always juveniles. It was in decent shape too as the adults tend to have quite worn plumage at this time of year. It cooperated nicely, even offering this stare-down pose for a few seconds...neat little sideways lean before sidestepping it outta here!

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/125s., f/5.6, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, cropped for composition, used the sponge tool to enhance the BG colours' vibrance. The eyering to our left was fully greyed out - I used the brush tool to paint some yellow back in (colour sampled from the other eyering).

[Karen Forderer]

Great photo. The sand is interesting with the very narrow DOF. I was able to photograph a flock of these birds last week in Nova Scotia. They are quite amusing running back and forth in the waves as they search for food in the mud.
Karen

[shane shacaluga]

I really like the "floating on air" feel some of these beach shots have with the shallow DOF. Maybe just a bit more would have worked even better as knees look a bit blurry, but not sure how it would have affected the BG
Nice work on the eye and sharp in the face and beak area. Nicely exposed

TFS

[Bill Dix]

Great pose and wonderful soft foreground/background. Nice work on the eye.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Dan, love the eye contact here, low shooting angle, and the leaning stance made me smile. I really like the pastel colours of the BG. An opportunity well used.

[Dumay de Boulle]

OOH!!! This is lovely! I like the fact that everything looks OOF except for the Plover. Great pastel colours...Love your work!

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Daniel very lovely image with nice subtle color and tones. Low POV and just the right DOF for making the plover stand out .
Nicely done all around .
TFS Andreas

[Mike Poole]

I though I'd had too many beers first time I saw this (!) but the leaning pose is great. Cracking control on the dof, which added to the low pov and the background details make this a winner for me

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Great subject isolation, POV, soft colors.

A tiny bit more DOF would have been nice for the legs, and wouldn't have hurt the wonderful subject isolation because of your POV.

Cheers

Randy