Willet at last light

[Dorian Anderson]

Frustrating day of writing yesterday, so I went down to one of my local SF Bay spots to unwind. Tide was out,
light was pretty flat, and it was windy, so I didn't expect to get much. I lay down in the mud and just waited.
Willets and Godwits came and went were but sufficiently far out that I couldn't do much with them. After 1.5
hours the sun peeked under the clouds to the west as it disappeared behind the coastal mountains. As it did it,
it cast a shadow from the the apartment building behind me right onto the few birds in front of me. This Willet
started to bath right on the edge of those shadows, and I knew he would jump up and into the light to shake
himself off whenever he was done. That took about 30 seconds, and this is the photographic result. Probably
could have closed down for a bit more DOF, but I'll take it. It was a nice end to the day.

Canon 500mm f/4 IS + 1.4x III on EOS 5D Mark IV
1/3200 at f/5.6, ISO 1600, handheld
Processed with standard sliders in Lightroom.

Thanks for stopping by!

[Jay Ing]

Hey, congrats on the "successful" unwind. Nice to know you're in the bay area too. I'm over in Fremont (shot in Palo Alto for a short while today). Like the dynamic lighting on this one... and the story of how it came to be. Cheers -

[John Mack]

Sweet light. Like the pose on the bird and the water drops coming off the feet. The crop looks a little tight.

[gail bisson]

Great POV and nice light especially against that dark BG. I like your story accompanying the image.
Water drops add a lot .
I agree with John-it feels a bit tight. If you have some canvas I would change this to a landscape orientation and add more room to the right.
Gail

[Glenn Pure]

Your patience paid off very nicely here, as well as a good lesson in anticipating behaviour. While I can see an argument for a looser crop or less central placement, on balance, this still works quite well for me. Detail is superb and the pop against the dark background really effective.

[Dorian Anderson]

Landscape, as suggested/requested. I'm juts not sure this show the movement as vertical the same way the previous
portrait-type crop does. Thoughts? Thanks!

Dorian

174617

[Noel Heustis]

Dorian - great story to along with the photo, I love the patience you took here. I think it paid off very well with that sweet light and dark bg with the added jumping action to boot. I liked the original post (I'm still getting used to more square looking crops - but I like them). Please forgive me for butchering your sig at the bottom right, but as this is just a suggestion for a crop I just thought I'd add my $.02 visually. I tried a bit more of a traditional crop by cropping off the right side and adding canvas with content-aware fill to the left. I then added a bit of NR with NI (mainly for the BG). Honestly my crop makes it look more like a landing pose as opposed to a bath jump. I think either one works. BTW...I was up late last night and was dead tired when I did this :) I didn't want to take the time to remove your sig and create a new one...sorry for the quickie. Anyway thanks for sharing and keep them coming.