Killdeer in Parking Lot Puddle

[Arthur Morris]

This adult Killdeer was photographed from my car yesterday with my rig resting on a folded up sweatshirt on the lowered driver’s side window; oh how I wish that I had brought my BLUBB to NY! With the Canon 800mm f/5.L IS lens, the 1.4X III TC, and the discontinued Canon EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 400. Evaluative metering -1/3 stop: 1/250 sec. at f/11 in Manual mode. Central sensor (by necessity) AI Servo/Rear Focus AF on the closest bird’s face and recompose. Click here if you missed the Rear Focus Tutorial. Bill and background clean-up.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

To read the whole story, see the original image, and learn a great new Photoshop tip see Living and Learning After the Thunderstorm & A Great New Content Aware Fill Trick on my blog.

[Bill Dix]

Beautifully clean post-storm light on this Killdeer, with a great pose. Sunlit grasses on the right just mildly distracting. Very useful lesson in clean-up. Thanks for sharing.

[Marina Scarr]

Nice portrait of the Killdeer with lovely light, colors and angle but feels cramped.

[Grace Scalzo]

Really nice light on this killdeer. Could be a bit looser in the frame. Good lessons in the blog. What a nice puddle. I never leave home without my blubb.

[Arthur Morris]

Nice portrait of the Killdeer with lovely light, colors and angle but feels cramped.

Agree, but I think that it just gets under the wire with respect to my "no longer than 75% of either dimension" guideline :).

[Miguel Palaviccini]

great detail and color on the killdeer. Wonder what a bit of desaturation on the grass would do to the overall image.

[gail bisson]

The light is beautiful as is the HA and pose.
I wish you had moved a bit to the right to get rid of some of the grasses on the right side and that may have allowed to get the head and beak against a cleaner BG.I find the near vertical grass that intersects with the beak distracting and would clone it out.
A lovely shot,
Gail

[dankearl]

Excellent. I like the environment, you should have said it was taken at the local wetlands!
The light and pose are very nice.

[Manjeet & Yograj Jadeja]

not often that we can suggest improvement on your photographs, so could not resist :)
it would have looked a lot better if the direction of the head and tail would have been reversed,
i.e. the bird looking in the direction of the tail with a similar pose.
Removing the all the grass on the right or the vertical blade of grass near the beak would also improve this one a lot

[Satish Ranadive]

Magnificent image of Killdeer in habitat.
Love the pose,colors.details and way bird pops on BG. Green curved BG and FG gives nice 3D effect to image.

Regards,
Satish.

[Martin Lord]

Hey Athur, Great image. The processing on the bird is great, I do agree with Gail's comment on the vertical grass. I am curious to ask, weren't you tempted to remove the 1.4x and shoot this at f/5.6? Seems like it could have add space to image and blur to the bright and busy background on the top right.

Best,
/martin

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

I really like the colors and environment you captured. Great find and execution from the car as well. I too would like just a little bit more room mostly at the tail end

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Athur, Great image. The processing on the bird is great, I do agree with Gail's comment on the vertical grass. I am curious to ask, weren't you tempted to remove the 1.4x and shoot this at f/5.6? Seems like it could have add space to image and blur to the bright and busy background on the top right. Best, /martin

Hi Martin, Removing the TC would have resulted in the bird being 1/2 the size in the frame as the area that the bird covers is a function of the square of the focal length, in this case that would have been 8 squared = 64 as compared to 11.2 squared or 125.44. And there was simply not time to move the car as the birds were moving about :).

[Martin Lord]

Thanks Authur. Always interested to see how you work.