Western Grebe Wing Flap

Canon 1D4
500mm +1.4x
Skimmer Pod

ISO 1000
f/8.0
1/2500 sec

I took this at Medicine Lake National Wildlife Refuge in Montana last month. I was happy to get this wing flap as I only saw this behavior twice during the few hours I had with over 40 Western Grebes. I was lying at the lake's edge, and they came very close to me. It was pretty much my favorite moment of the trip, to be in their trusting company. The light was pretty drab, and at the time I was bummed about that, but the truth is if I had had much more light, I would have blown out the breast. As it was, I had to tone it down quite a bit in PS.
Crop, sharpening, NR as well.
Thanks so much for looking, and for any comments and critiques.

Wonderful! The water droplets really add and the wing position is very pleasing, as is the light. Great sharpness and composition!

Mellissa,
The Western Grebe is a real favorite of mine, I am envious of your opportunity!
This is really good, a full on flap and hard to get.
It looks Almost FF, but if you have room above, I think that would look good with a bit off the bottom.
The light looks fine, they have such great eyes, your exposure looks perfect to me.

If you take some off the bottom you chop into the very lovely reflection. The reflection adds greatly to the beauty of the image (if that's possible) in that it comes to an end (feathers out, sort of) before the edge of the frame. That is a very special feature, to me. And why add more on top? That would make the image too bottom-heavy. Trying to put the eye in a rule-of-thirds position, if that was the reasoning, just doesn't apply here. There are often other factors that determine the most balanced composition.

Great scene and great details.

Excellent image of grebe with nice wing flap. Very nice color scheme,great details,beautiful red eye and composition.
Love water droplets on body and those coming from wing..

Regards,
Satish.

Excellent pose & wing position. Great details. The dof is perfect.

This is superb! great low angle, wonderful pose & details. The red eye is striking.

Excellent pose and great low angle.wonderful details.

Such very clear water droplets, quite sparkly...exposure perfect and sharp as one could hope for, Stunning eye....maybe just a smidgeon more space on the left...but I say that with tongue in cheek as it's darn fine as is....well done Melissa

Gorgeous! I enjoy the limited color palette here, it makes the striking eye even more prominent in the composition. Would not suggest changing anything here...

Wonderful exposure and wing wing flap. I like the water drops on the breast and under the fore wing. Great eye as well. Nicely done.

Melissa, this is a stunner! Glad I got a chance to see it here in higher res (I first saw it on fb, and we know what that does to images). Exposure is spot on and I'm glad you were able to get the wings spread out like that.

Miguel

Superb pose, great details and i love the composition a lot
IQ looks fantastic and the sting of water droplets do make it more special
love it

Melissa:

The thumbnail doesn't do this justice. Too subtle to shine until you see it bigger.

The soft light allowed nice detail to be retained on the whites. The head and neck position is superb, nice shooting angle.

In a perfect world, would prefer the near wing to be opened more, but the risk there is losing the nice head angle if he was facing more towards you. I do think the spray of drops off that wing helps add detail interest which compensates.

I have photographed many hundreds if not thousands of loon wing flaps, and still have not captured the perfect one. Keep me working on it. For some perverse reason, 75-80% of loon wing flaps are facing away from me!

Very sweet overall, nice job!

Randy

Thanks a lot for all the feedback.