Here's a juvenile Black-bellied Plover that was slowly patrolling the shores of the Ottawa River. Moving a bit more to my left and then pointing the my lens to the right allowed me to include a bit of water for additional colours. This is the same "fish eating" individual I posted earlier this week...
Canon 7D + 500mm f/4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1000s., f/5.6, ISO 400, natural light, handheld lying prone on some comfy rocks, small crop for comp, a few specular highlights removed, and toned down some of the brighter areas in the vegetation and BG.
The green background is perfect, it really brings out the bird.
I like very much the idea of including a bit of water to the right. I find the water color to be distracting because it seems off (more purple than blue, and a bit saturated).
In the water I see a rather distinct diagonal line in the transition from mauve to blue on the left. It would be nice if that transition was smoother or the line was blurred. I am not sure if that is an artifact of converting to jpeg, or if it is from processing?
This is a super shot Daniel. Some work on the water may make it even better, if your far more experienced eye agrees with this newbie's ;)
Thanks guys. Yes, I prefer seeing at least one foot visible in shorebird images (or at least one of them raised). Ross, thanks for your thoughts on the image. The water can certainly be tweaked, and that line blended away - I'm pretty sure it is a faint oof element that I had not noticed.