I have been photographing alot of different species this spring, but the piping plovers remain my favorite. This little one peeking out from underneath his father, with his tiny wing showing, just melted my heart.
Thank you for looking and for your comments...I appreciate them all.
1/800, f10, iso800
Canon 1dx, 600f4 + 2.0tc (Don't want to get too close), lowered rrs tripod
Clean image, no cloning, just crop, levels, sharpened.
For me, the composition feels a little unbalanced with the birds too far to the left, albeit I understand your thinking with the rock formation, especially the large one in the lower right. I'd be tempted to lose part of the rock for the sake of composition, WDYT?
Mike
Last edited by Mike Poole; 06-09-2015 at 04:03 PM.
Mike, thank you for your thoughtful comment. I posted this one to draw out ideas on the comp as I too am not settled with it as presented. While I don't want to cut that big rock on the right, I could crop to its edge.
I actually love the balance created by big rock.
If anything, my suggestion would be to lose some space from above kind of to the line of just visible rocks at the back.
So more panoramic rather than standard would really work well here IMHO.
Hi Grace, lovely image of the little one. I too feel you need more space on the left. I understand the main subject is the little one, but his father is much larger in the frame and he was looking left. Loi
This is lovely Grace.
Such a good head-on look from the chick.
Great low POV and I like your comp but could also see a crop off the RHS to the edge of the big rock.
The cuteness factor is running high in this image!
Gail
This is one heck of a winning image, Grace. The cuteness factor is huge, and I absolutely love the pebble environment. I would crop some from the right and a little off of the top if it were mine b/c I think it would bring even more focus to your subjects.
Love these types of piping plover parent chick images, and your title fits perfectly. How do sex the bird? I've heard that complete chest bands indicate a male, but just wondering how you go about it...Since the big rock on the left is cut by the frame anyway, visually I see nothing wrong with slicing into the big rock on the right...anyway, cropping out the darker small rock on the right hand side will improve an already wonderful image....it's a small visual pull...regardless...awesome! As an aside...they spent a couple hundred thousand dollars in my neck of the woods to try and get this species to nest on the beach....still no nesting birds, but now they are killing ring billed gull eggs to cut down on "predator" stress....for nesting plovers that don't even exist! I guess someone thinks it looks more like federal dollars are "doing something" to help the plovers out.... :(
Simply perfection, Grace. Too cute is an understatement, beautiful light, and like the polished shore stones. Would have commented much earlier, but I was photographing birds just west of Iquitos, Peru on the Amazon River around the time of your posting.