Puffy Piping Plover

[Joseph Cala]

These guys showed back up here last week and I needed to improve my shots on them, so I headed down to the shore this AM after failing miserably Thursday due to fog. As soon as I hit the beach I saw two--which quickly turned to at least 7. I spent a few minutes trying to follow them, and eventually gave up and just parked myself on the beach.

I apparently got lucky in my kneeling choice, because I had 7+ start up their displaying all around me for the better part of an hour. I took a ton of pics, and narrowed it down to a few. I *think* I like this one the best, due to angle and pose.

I cropped maybe 25% of the original shot, and only did some minor tweaks of temp and fill light.

Nikon D300, Sigma 500mm + 2x TC, f 5.6, 1/640 sec @ ISO 200, EC -0.7.

110703

[gail bisson]

I like the seashell "perch" and the HA. The head is not tack sharp and I would work on some sharpening. I would clone out the branch in RUC as well and add more room on the right,
gail
PS you can post bigger at 1024 x 800 pixels

[christopher galeski]

nice image and nice pose,agree on comments made by Gail.thanks.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Joseph, I liked the low angle and the pose. nice habitat as well. The main issue here is that of critical AF point DOF coverage. You were working with high focal length and were quite close. Since you had plenty headroom on the ISO front, it would have been wise to stop down. what was the f-stop? f5.6 must be a typo since you had 500 and 2xtc. Critical AF does not seem to be on the eye. If mine, I'd crop some from bottom.

[Joseph Cala]

Kaustubh-

I suppose technically it was a typo. My camera doesn't read the 2x tc and my f/stop was set on 5.6 prior. The lens is a 4.5, and I suppose in hind-sight I should have stopped down even more on the non-tc photos. It's entirely possible that I missed critical focus on the eye...I was laying in the sand and shooting in MF. I've got a couple of others from that set that I'll need to look a little more closely at.

Thanks for the critiques everyone!