One more time.

[James Shadle]

Roseate Spoonbill
Tampa Bay, from the deck of "The Hooptie Deux"
Nikon D300 Sigma 300-800mm @ 650mm
ISO 400
1/2000ss @ F6.3 I tend to make images around F8 for this type of image.
In this case I wanted a smooth background, so F6.3 (5.6 is my max aperture)

Rare for me to get a green background with Spoonies so this tickled me.
I used some average blur in a layer to level the background out a bit.

Thanks James

[Jasper Doest]

Slightly too clean for my taste....I wonder if the average blur was really needed. But what a pose!!!

[Ramon M. Casares]

Stunning! Striking pose, terific detail, great colors and BG and fantastic comp IMO. congratulations!

[Fabs Forns]

Beautiful pink on green and great pose. Jasper has a point about the blur.

I much prefer green to blue for Spoonies, so I like this very much.

Coming from Artie's school, I rarely use f/8. unless I'm doing a head on face portrait or a pair of bird. Then again, I have one more stop at minimum f/4

[Judy Lynn Malloch]

Oooh like this one a lot James Cool flight pose and a killer BG. Love it.

[Gyorgy Szimuly]

James, this turn is very impressive. Very nice details and colors.
I find the wing contour a bit strange.

Szimi

[Arthur Morris]

Love the angled pose and the killer BKGR (which, by the way, is patented by me <smile>) As for the Average Blur, it was well done and those mangroves can be a bit unpleasant when birds are landing right in front of them as they often do. May I assume that you reduced the opacity there? Also, how did you select the BKGR?

Note to Fabs: I pretty much use f/8 nmow for sunny flight except with closer BKGRs.

[James Shadle]

Love the angled pose and the killer BKGR (which, by the way, is patented by me <SMILE>) As for the Average Blur, it was well done and those mangroves can be a bit unpleasant when birds are landing right in front of them as they often do. May I assume that you reduced the opacity there? Also, how did you select the BKGR?

Note to Fabs: I pretty much use f/8 nmow for sunny flight except with closer BKGRs.

Thanks Artie,
I did use the opacity slider. I did two passes with avg blur in small amounts.
To select the background I used the magic wand and refined the edges with Refine Edge tool.

James

[Grady Weed]

Outstanding James, but you know that my friend.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey James,
Killer pose.....I might go for a hair more detail back in the BG....but it's not a deal breaker IMO. Love the tight crop:D...as it makes a nice diagonal.
Do you think the Hooptie will be able to handle 2 Pigmonsters on board??:eek: