Before the storm

[Robert Kimbrell]

D-800 500f4 with 1.4tc
f16 1/640 iso 1250 ~ 30% crop. A lillte cloning to clean up the sand.
I took this Saturday morning, about an hour after sunrise. Nice light from behind and shooting into a lightening storm a few miles offshore. I chose to stop down here trying to get full focus on both birds, as they were constantly moving.

[Karl Egressy]

Although a little bit flat due to the low light is still looks good.

[gail bisson]

A great interaction captured. I like the supplicant pose of the chick and the bill that is too big for his head.
I think the adult's head could use a bit more selective sharpening.
Great low POV and it is great that both birds have catchlights.
I see a few cloning artifacts under the adults tail and belly. Perhaps you did some beach clean-up? Easy fix to tidy these areas up,
Gail

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image. Very poses of both mom and kid with nice HA.
I like the green vegetation along sand. Would give panorama crop by cropping both at the top and bottom slightly.

Regards,
Satish.

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Very nice image Robert. Great interaction and low angle.

[arash_hazeghi]

I love having the adult and chick on one frame, both with good HA and I like the habitat too. IQ is not great however, both birds are a bit soft and the whites look flat with no details.

The softness is coming from diffraction at f/16. A camera with small pixels like D800 will be diffraction limited at such small aperture, resulting in a soft hazy RAW... you will get much better results if you shoot at larger aperture when DOF is not the limiting factor. For this one you may want to try some more selective sharpening...

TFS

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Robert, a tender moment well captured, and I like your low angled perspective.