Sandpiper Grubbing

[Jon Rista]

During the last few days of August, I was renting the Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L II IS and EF 2x TC III. I spent the morning of the 27th at Chatfield State Park, where an area of wetlands usually covered in a couple feet of water with numerous sandbars and small islands was mostly now mostly marsh and solid land, and covered in moss and grass, with small stones protruding throughout the entire area. The area was covered in plovers (mostly Killdeer) and small groups of Sandpipers (not sure what species.) I caught quite a number of photos of this one Sandpiper in particular, as he hunted for grubs, worms, etc. among the grass.

Canon 7D w/ 600mm lens
Canon EF 300mm f/2.8 L II IS + EF 2x TC III

Exposure: 1/1000s @ f/9 ISO 400

Some basic PP exposure work, about 50% crop, feathers and other "junk" cleaned up with spot healing and patching in Photoshop.

[Randy Stout]

Jon:

Good shooting angle, grub a real plus, sharp, well exposed. Image is quite contrasty, and I would prefer some separation of the bird from the rock.

I don't know if you worked on the upper left corner, but there are a couple of transitions there which could be smoothed a bit with the clone stamp.

Looks like this lens combo worked well for you. How did you find the hand holding with that combo?

Cheers

Randy

[dankearl]

Great angle, and I agree about the contrast, I think a bit better PP, (less contrast, a bit more NR on the BG)
would make this look better for me.

[Dan Brown]

I agree with Randy's critique, nice low angle and eye contact! FWIW, I think this is a juv. Baird's Sandpiper, another migrant thru your area. Black legs, buffy-streaky breast, long primaries (from what I see here) and the mantle feathers all seem to fit Baird's. Good bird and capture!

[Jon Rista]

Sorry about the background. It actually looks quite good in the pre-JPEG version...no noise at all. I saved this to a 250kb size limit, and its adding some compression artifacts and posterization. Does that size limit apply to paid members, or can I upload a version with less compression?

---

@Randy: I worked the upper center, to remove a fairly large OOF rock that was just very distracting. It was probably some of the most extensive removal I've done on a bird photo yet. The upper left corner is actually as-is out of camera, although it does look a bit rough, which is probably the JPEG compression. I'll see what I can do about that.

Regarding hand-holding the 300mm, it was actually not bad at all! I hauled the thing around on a 7D, with a battery grip and the 2x TC for about 6 hours strait, and it didn't really bother. The balance is quite superb, and stabilizing it with nothing but my hands, arms, and legs was pretty easy.

@dankearl: I'll see what I can do about the contrast. I'm guessing you are referring particularly to the grass, which I agree comes off a bit harsh. Fairly low, direct sun angle.

@Dan: Thanks for the ID!! I was having a real hard time identifying it, as juvi's are rarely included in sample photos or artist renditions on bird ID sites.

[Shawn Zierman]

I agree 100% with ID offered...juvi Baird's Sandpiper.
Love the grub in the grasp...very cool. Low angle is decent, though since the feet
would not have been visible anyway, I would have gone lower than this, i.e. camera
and lens slightly level with or slightly below grass level...essentially trying to achieve
more foreground blur than you did here...Light quality is not the greatest...