Virginia Rail Portrait.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It's always a pleasure finding a cooperative individual or two of this species! At his particular spot a park-like manicured grassy area abuts to a marshy pond, providing excellent clear viewing opportunities when they do venture out. In retrospect I should have stopped down to f/8 - f/10 for the bill tip as I had the room to do so...

Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1250s., f/6.3, ISO 800, natural light, handheld, full-frame, a single specular highlight on the bill that did not add much was patched out, a couple of smaller bright spots in the BG toned down via low opacity clone tool. Audio used.

[Binu John]

Beautiful shot, Daniel! Excellent colors, HA and feather details!

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Awesome details, lovely composition and processing. I agree, f/8 would have helped getting the bill tip sharper. TFS>

[MohsenVahedipour]

Great details, composition, BG & HA.

[christopher galeski]

nice portrait,nice colors,pleasant light,nice HA.

[Randy Stout]

Daniel:

Good shooting angle, soft BG, great eye, rich colors on bird.

Yes to a bit more DOF as you mentioned, but the eye is so good, it tends to draw our attention.

Cheers

Randy

[Jonathan Ashton]

Very nice shot just a tad short on DOF, excellent detail and exposure, a smaller aperture may not have provided such a complimentary background.

[Karl Egressy]

Great light, amazing detail and IQ, Daniel.