Dowitcher

Not sure which kind. The image was taken last Saturday at the Radio Road ponds in Redwood City, CA. Some vegetation in the left lower corner caused an overall green cast which I tried to correct in ACR. But I thought that the green scum colored little rock on the right provided a nice balance. What do you think?

I am little bit concerned about the dreaded cut-out look and would appreciate your feedback. Thanks in advance. Best, JR

Canon 40D, 500F4IS, 1/1000s. F4.0, ISO-400, Manual Exposure, Handheld

Joerg:

The color was the first thing I noticed, and I think it is subdued enough to work well. , and I think the balance of colors and masses does work well here.
The sharpness is OK for me. I wouldn't want any more,but wasn't struck by the 'cut out' effect, to which I am usually very sensitive.
Nice shooting angle.

I might fiddle a bit with the comp., trying just a little crop up from the bottom, because the reflection is weak. Don't want to lose all the green in LLC however.

The ripples in the water give an interesting horizontal layering effect which adds some interest to the image for me.

Cheers

Randuy

I like the subdued tones as well. The bird does not look "cut out" to me either. Randy's comment is interesting to me since I was thinking that maybe having the whole reflection in the foreground would be nice. :confused:

Julie:

I don't think there is a right or wrong on the reflection, but my tendency is to eliminate most of it if it is weak or distorted. In this case, there is a big break in the reflection of the head, and that tends to attract my eye away from the bird.

Cheers

Randy

Thank you both for your comments. As you caused me to pay closer attention to the reflection I for the first time noticed this weird vertical band cutting through the head reflection at the bottom. It's also in the raw already and I have no clue as to what it is or causes it...

In general, I agree with Randy that the reflection is not very strong and hence should be reduced but a closer crop would cut off more of the rock on the right...

JR

Great detail in the image and nice head angle. I think I would try and warm the image up a bit, it looks a little too cloudy! But that might just be personal preference.

As for Long-billed or Short-billed, I'll have to vote on Long-billed (although there are some SB details going for it). Mainly because of the way the markings are shaped on the flanks of the bird. On a SB there usually is less markings and they're a lot less pronounced, there are also white spaces between the markings. On this bird there are barely any white spaces between the grey-ish markings. Not sure if that made much sense? Anyway, I'm not totally convinced on this ID.