A Bedtime Snack for Junior

[Bill Dix]

A Black Skimmer was bringing in the last feeding of the night, and catching the light minutes before the sun set over Nickerson Beach. From Tuesday night of last week.

D7200 + 1.4 TC, ISO 2500, 1/2500s @ f/8 manual; Gitzo and Mongoose.

[Richard Flack]

I really like this Bill, the evening light and cracker background, as well as the pose of the bird make this really pleasing to the eye. If anything the relatively high ISO may not have helped the image quality of the bird. Thanks so much for sharing.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Lovely soft light, nice wing spread. The fish is a bonus. Thank you for sharing, Bill.

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Good one, Bill. Perfect capture in the days last light. Like the wing and tail positions as the Skimmer arrives, just above the dune grasses with dinner. Still has water drops on tip of beak. Well done.

Geoffrey

[Daniel Cadieux]

Neat landing pose and sweet light. I like the tall grasses below. I would be less aggressive with the NR on the subject itself.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all. I agree, Daniel. Because of some noise on the upraised wing I experimented with a different NR protocol than usual, and I knew before posting this that I had gone too far. I think that if I went back to the RAW file and started from scratch I could make a bit of improvement to the IQ.

[Bill Dix]

I finally got back to this one, and re-did it from scratch. Backing off on the NR did make a noticeable difference, at least to my eye. Thanks for looking.