I captured this shot about an hour after sunrise at Presqu’ile Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada.
Laying flat out in the sand, I handheld the Canon EOS 7D mkII and EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM lens. Settings were f/5.6, 1/1000s, ISO 640, 330mm. Shot RAW and processed in Lightroom.
Cropped to about 70% frame width for composition.
Reduced saturation or highlights of a few objects on the beach. Brightened the eye reflection, cloned out one dark spot in background water. Brought up the shadows to lighten the dark kelp. Reduced overall saturation slightly.
Applied noise reduction to background, and subtle dark vignette in the corners.
I very much welcome and appreciate your critiques - Thanks for having a look!
What a lovely shot of this bird; nice angle and pose with raised foot; exposure, detail and sharpening just right; low POV places at least part of him against the water (I first thought it was sky). This may be a case where just a tad higher might have worked better in retrospect, given the oof foreground that's blocking his foot. But I would be thrilled with this, since this species is a rather rare vagrant in our parts. A few were reported on a sod farm near me several weeks ago, and I made six visits hoping to catch one of them. This particular farmer did not take kindly to birders and photographers traipsing across his fields, and I never got anything better than a distant ID shot.
Lovely walking pose and the foreground interest works nicely with the shot - I like a bit of environment in a shot. The low POV is a big plus to the shot.
It's a real shame about the twig covering the leg as the shot would be much stronger without it. I'd be tempted to lighten the eye a touch more, although it doesn't need much.
Do you have any shots of the next step when he'd cleared the twig?
Thanks for taking time to critique my Buff-breasted shot Bill and Mike.
Unfortunately I was having a difficult time with the clutter and vegetation on the beach as I panned lying down. The bird was scurrying along as I recall about 8-10 feet from me. My next frames were OOF. I was fortunate to get another couple of good shots of the bird standing next to plants. I felt very lucky to have seen the bird, and even more happy to see some shots turned out
So one raised foot does not trump one hidden one eh? Lol
Nice POV, walking pose and nice detail. This is one of my nemesis birds.
Seen it only once coming back from a Presqu'ile OFO trip almost twenty years ago and that's it.
Ross, Sure it would be wonderful in a perfect world to not have that branch. Looks like the next step that the bird took might have had a similar blockage, behind the vegetation. You still have a pleasing image here, so moving off that topic....I would like to see a touch more space on the tail side of the frame. Feels just a bit tight there. I would lift the shadow blobs under his tail (tonal contrast in the NIk filter suite works well for this). Lovely light blue background and good low angle work.
You got some good comments/suggestions Ross (and yes, bummer about that foreground branch). Nice details on the subject BTW. You would have loved the one we had at our preferred beach a couple of years ago :-)
So one raised foot does not trump one hidden one eh? Too funny!
I am late to the party and have little else to add. These are one of my favorite shorebirds.
Great POV and I think the eye is perfect. Would personally not fiddle with it anymore.
Great find and nice image,
Gail
Buff-breasted Sandpiper
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Too funny!
