Picnic Guest

[Mack Hicks]

While having lunch at the picnic area at Rio Grande Campground in Big Bend NP last Thanksgiving, my wife and I were facinated by this brown creeper. He really paid me no mind as I followed him/her around the cottonwood tree several times. This is almost full frame, I was probably less than 4 feet away most of the time.

Nikon D200, 1/160, ISO 250, probably program mode, what I used most of the time before reading Artie's books.

Sigma 70-300, 220 mm @f/5.6 macro mode.

Post processing in LR 3, beta

[Mack Hicks]

I did you some horizontal gradients to darken both edges so the bird would stand out from the tree more. The head is not as sharp as I would like and the position is not ideal, but that spider disappeared PDQ.

[Daniel Cadieux]

You're lucky this creeper let you follow it the way it did! I find the two OOF pieces of bark distracting, and I really wish it had turned its' head for you. I'm glad you learned to get out of program mode...I also hope you've since learned to raise the ISO for lowlight/fast subject photography ;-)