Purple Sandpiper

[Aditya Sridhar]

These birds are winter visitors to the UK, and a reliable location to spot them in the county of Hampshire is Southsea Castle. Unfortunately, photographing them means standing behind a railing and aiming down a steep slope. The direction of the sunlight is always against the birds too, so decent images can only be captured during periods of cloud cover. I know this image is quite busy due to the many water droplets, but I tried to keep cloning to a minimum.

Camera - Nikon D850
Focal Length - 700mm
Aperture - f/8
Shutter Speed - 1/2500s
ISO - 4000
Handheld
Manual, Auto ISO
~60% of Full-frame
As always, all comments & CC are appreciated! :bg3:

[Bill Dix]

I love to watch these guys wait on the rocks until the wave crashes, and then race onto the wet rocks to fetch a small morsel. The bird is sharp with nice detail and exposure. I don't mind the drops; they add to the scene. I'm not too crazy about the oof foreground but you take what you can get.

[Colin Driscoll]

I really like this one, a really good habitat shot. Pity about the two oof droplets but they could be removed harmlessly.

[John Mack]

I love the splashing water on this one. I wouldn't have lost any of the water drops. But you call chief. Nice framing. I don't mind the light here. Nice to see something different.

[Dorian Anderson]

I loved photographing these guys when I lived in Boston - always in winter, so I had to brave the cold. This is a nice view of this rockhopper but there are several issues. You have both too much and not enough backlighting. Cloud would have evened out the scene and more light would have facilitated more experimentation with the splashes. The details on the bird look a bit crunchy and it is jammed into the lower part of the frame. I assume you were using 500mm f/5.6 + 1.4x? This is an example where having another stop noise or shutter would have helped. The frame also looks a bit yellow to me, but color balance is not usually my strongsuit....

[Aditya Sridhar]

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions :S3:

Dorian - Thanks a lot for the detailed feedback! Yes, I was using the 500mm f/5.6 PF with the 1.4x. The light wasn't ideal, but this is about as good as it gets during the UK winter, unfortunately. With that being said, I did go back and reprocessed the image from the ground up, with a touch more NR on the bird and I fixed the color cast (I think). Added way less saturation and toned down the contrast too.

Hope this version's better!