Wild Turkey

[Ross Taylor]

This photo was taken at Ottawa, Ontario, Canada on a very dark and overcast American Thanksgiving Day. This individual is likely from the same flock as Daniel’s Wild Turkey posted a few days ago. I found it quite difficult to envision a flattering shot for this bird, so I aimed to embrace it's ugliness in an amusing way.

My Canon EOS 7D mkII, and EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens were handheld as I sat on the ground surrounded by the flock. Settings were f/5.6, 1/125s, ISO 500, 312mm. Shot RAW and processed in Lightroom. The bird was at MFD from me, as such DOF was going to be minimal so I aimed for low ISO given the poor lighting. I gave the bird some corn after staring me down.

Aside from regular LR processing, I applied localized sharpening to the beak. Cropped portrait format from landscape (a 7MP image from 20MP original).

Critiques very much appreciated - Thanks for having a look :)

Ross

[David Cowling]

This made me smile as soon as I saw it. Love the eyes. I might have tried a smaller aperture at the expense of raising the ISO to perhaps get the beak in focus. Easy for me to say and difficult to achieve being so close to the subject.

[Lorant Voros]

Funny and ugly. Very interesting and I like it a lot for the effect it creates. TFS.

[keith mitchell]

Pity about the little bit of loss of DOF,but that apart I really do like this Ross.

Keith.

[Karl Egressy]

Based on your setting there was not much opportunity to go to f 8.0 per se to create better DOF.
Nice and very original approach, Ross.

[Ross Taylor]

Thanks David, Lorant, Keith, and Karl.

With the lens, focal length, and subject distance of 3 to 6 feet, I expected smaller apertures would very minimally affect DOF.

Agreed, it would have certainly been better to have the bill in focus despite that :)

Thanks for checking it out!

Ross