Roseate Spoonbill

[Connie Mier]

Chokoloskee Bay, Everglades. Early morning with the flock of roseates on Chokoloskee Bay started out boring as they roosted in the mangroves more or less sleeping (hiding the bills). Along came a westerly storm behind them and they became quite alert and eventually flew off to a safer area (at least more hidden), as this one is doing.I wish I hadn't captured it with more wing spread, but I at least accomplished my goal of capturing it head on.

The background is clouds and I cloned out a few errant branches on corner and a bit of darker sky on left. Cropped all around, mostly on bottom.
Sony a 700, 70-400mm Sony lens
1/2000, ISO400, f5.6
Thanks for looking and commenting.
Connie

[Randy Stout]

Connie:

Very nice exposure, sharp, interesting banking approach.
I agree with you about the wing spread.

The high effect works well for these guys.

The merge of the head/bill with the body does detract somewhat. It is obviously the bill that is one of their unique characteristics, and that is not well seen here.

For my personal taste, maybe a bit much negative space here. As mentioned, I like the highkey effect, but perhaps not quite so much blank canvas. If the image quality will stand it, I would crop even tighter, from the right and a bit up as well.

Randy

[Ramon M. Casares]

I love it, and the wings position here TO ME are great, I specially like the bird's left wing and I would suggest to darken the right wing a tad. Love the high key here and the detail, colors and exppsure are fantastic IMO, and also I do like the wide comp, probably for web use it could go tighter, but for print, I like it as it is.
Congratulations!

[Stu Bowie]

Super banking angle Connie, and you have exposed the spoonbill very well. Great eye contact, and the high key works very well. Well captured.

[Connie Mier]

Everyone, thank you for the comments and glad you liked this photo. Randy, I wished I could get a shot like this that is more full frame, not sure I could get away with more cropping. In the best of worlds, I would have this one and another more full frame shot because, as like Ramon, I really like the wide comp.
Connie

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautifully done Image.. the high key works well here.. congrats

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Exposure and other technical aspects of the image are excellent. I'm not sure how much you cropped, but if you are indeed using a Sony 70-400G, as I do, you'll find that it's outstanding image resolution allows greater cropping than most other lenses IMO. In any case, if you say you could not crop more and retain image quality, I believe you.
Now to the image. Although I'm sure this was the angle you saw, but the bird isn't really banking, and the tilt of the image isn't right (in my opinion of course). The composition, having the subject centered (I know there is a slight offset) is less than optimal as well.
I took the liberty of taking your image and cropping and rotating the image, just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from. Essentially the bird is symmetrical, from right to left, and this does call for centering.
Keep up the good work! regards~Bill

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

I honestly prefer the original post Connie. You did an awesome job capturing this babe head-on! A bit of a shame about the bland sky, and the lack of separation between bill and body, but I like the image very much as is. Thanks for sharing. Keep up the great work! :)