In Hot Pursuit...

[Sandy Witvoet]

...of his chosen "Lady Friend"... and being quite vocal about it too! I finally blew the dust off the camera and charged the battery and spent a few hours at a lake that wasn't frozen last week. T'was so nice to get out again! Had a mix of sun and clouds.
Canada Goose
Canon 70D, 100-400 II @ 400. ISO 800, f 6.3, ss 1/4000, center point focus. Adjusted lighting Levels, NR, sharpening. Crop.

[Warren Spreng]

Great catch! Birds in flight is an area I really need to work on. This is a great pose, nice details, lighting looks great and nice DOF.

[Sandy Witvoet]

Thanks Warren! I love BIF's.... well, and other bird stuff too!

[Doug West]

Really nice Sandy...wing position is excellent....love the open mouth....love
him skimming the water.

Doug

[Glennie Passier]

Very nice Sandy! Like Doug, I also like the wing position and the honking beak....with tongue. Composition looks good also. I can't decide if his cheek parts look a bit hot? Well done Sandy! It's good to get out in the sunshine with a camera.

TFS

[Sandy Witvoet]

Thanks Warren, Doug and Glennie! Yeah, cheek looks a bit hot... as does the little "butt" patch. Was getting into late morning light by this time. Had a couple other frames with wings up, but the shoreline intersected. Head is soft as I look at it here.

It is SO nice to be back here in ETL.... The variety, quality, C/C and so much more is exceptional in this forum...Thanks to Diane for being mod extraordinaire! (Yeah, I've just been lurking over the winter!)

[Glennie Passier]

Sandy, ditto your thoughts on the lone ETL moderator...she works so hard and gives so much! And the participants aren't bad either.

[Diane Miller]

Hey, it's all YOU guys who make this place!! And welcome back, Sandy! I've / we've missed you!

This is just awesome! A fantastic pose and a great capture of a moving subject -- not easy!

I don't remember how you process, but hot whites are the bane of us all. It's a tiny nitpick on this one as that area is -- well -- white, as I recall. It you're using Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom (same conversion engine), recent versions will attempt to recover highlights, but you can sometimes help things further by some combination of lowering the Contrast slider, bringing the Highlights slider left, lowering Exposure and increasing the Shadows slider (to the right). If they were too blown, that won't help, though.

(I spent about an hour today blowing highlights on about half my shots of an Acorn Woodpecker. I'll get it right tomorrow, though!)

[Sandy Witvoet]

Thanks Diane! (I'm a bit late in replying... sorry about that). Thanks much for the help, as always! As Loon "season" is almost here... I'll spending lots of time blowing the whites and/or underexposing the blacks on my fave "black and white" birds on the water! LOL!