Sandpiper

[Alex Becker]

Hi all,

Here is sandpiper frame taken in Captiva, Florida about a month ago ~45 minutes before the sun went down. In post I cropped a bit and rotated the image so it wasn't as slanted on the beach, increased exposure about 1/3 stop, removed a blue cast and a stick from the foreground, and some small slider tweaks. I also tried the sharpening method (of importing and resharpening the jpg after resizing) that David Salem talked about on annmpacheco's excellent 'pintail at Bosque' post so hopefully the image looks okay and isn't over or under sharpened. Many thanks to all who shared their knowledge there.

Camera: Nikon D500
Lens: 200-500mm f/5.6 at 500mm
Specs: 1/2500 ISO 500 f/5.6

Thank you for looking,
Alex

[Isaac Grant]

Hi Alex. It's always nice to get so close to Sanderling. They are one of my favorite birds as they are relatively tame and so active that they are a pleasure to watch. You had nice light and a good pose on a lovely beach.

Here are some things I think could improve things.

I would prefer a little more of a head turn as the bird is facing slightly away. Still nice but not ideal.
The sun was not at your back here. Looks like you were off by about 40 degrees. Always best to have the sun at your back and your shadow facing the bird or to be off by maybe 10 degrees at most.
You have increased the exposure too much and have lost details in some of your whites. When photographing a white bird in strong evening sun I would be tempted to use negative compensation of maybe -1/3 or 2/3rds depending on the light. In any case you for sure should not have upped the exposure by 1/3rd.
The 2 large orange things in the background are distracting and take away from the rest of that beautiful sandy blur.
I would add a little more room to the right as it seems a bit tight against the bird.
Would also try and level a bit more to take away the slope.
Using detail extractor is a nice way to get a little more details out of your whites once you have corrected the exposure.

Shot is nice but a few small changes make a big difference in the final presentation.

[John Whaley]

Hi Alex. It's always nice to get so close to Sanderling. They are one of my favorite birds as they are relatively tame and so active that they are a pleasure to watch. You had nice light and a good pose on a lovely beach.

Here are some things I think could improve things.

I would prefer a little more of a head turn as the bird is facing slightly away. Still nice but not ideal.
The sun was not at your back here. Looks like you were off by about 40 degrees. Always best to have the sun at your back and your shadow facing the bird or to be off by maybe 10 degrees at most.
You have increased the exposure too much and have lost details in some of your whites. When photographing a white bird in strong evening sun I would be tempted to use negative compensation of maybe -1/3 or 2/3rds depending on the light. In any case you for sure should not have upped the exposure by 1/3rd.
The 2 large orange things in the background are distracting and take away from the rest of that beautiful sandy blur.
I would add a little more room to the right as it seems a bit tight against the bird.
Would also try and level a bit more to take away the slope.
Using detail extractor is a nice way to get a little more details out of your whites once you have corrected the exposure.

Shot is nice but a few small changes make a big difference in the final presentation.

I like your shot - Agree with great advice offered by Issac.

[keith mitchell]

Alex agree with Isaac's points ,what I do think is good is the nice detail you have in the beak and legs,just a few tweaks to take this up another notch,nice image.

Keith.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Alex, In addition to Isaac's excellent comments above understand that with the sun coming from well to the left that a bit more head turn would have reduced the brightness of the whites on the neck ...

a

[Joseph Przybyla]

Beautiful little bird, nice composition. To follow up on one of Isaac's critique and suggestions in the bright light of Florida sometimes on white birds I am reducing the exposure by -1 stop and possibly more depending on what shows on the histogram and the blinkies on the LCD display. Thank you for sharing, Alex.

[Alex Becker]

Hi Alex. It's always nice to get so close to Sanderling. They are one of my favorite birds as they are relatively tame and so active that they are a pleasure to watch. You had nice light and a good pose on a lovely beach.

Here are some things I think could improve things.

I would prefer a little more of a head turn as the bird is facing slightly away. Still nice but not ideal.
The sun was not at your back here. Looks like you were off by about 40 degrees. Always best to have the sun at your back and your shadow facing the bird or to be off by maybe 10 degrees at most.
You have increased the exposure too much and have lost details in some of your whites. When photographing a white bird in strong evening sun I would be tempted to use negative compensation of maybe -1/3 or 2/3rds depending on the light. In any case you for sure should not have upped the exposure by 1/3rd.
The 2 large orange things in the background are distracting and take away from the rest of that beautiful sandy blur.
I would add a little more room to the right as it seems a bit tight against the bird.
Would also try and level a bit more to take away the slope.
Using detail extractor is a nice way to get a little more details out of your whites once you have corrected the exposure.

Shot is nice but a few small changes make a big difference in the final presentation.

Hi Isaac,

Wow -- seriously thank you so much for such a thorough critique -- this is exactly what I'm looking for. You've given me a ton to think about and I'm going to try again on the master file -- even if just for experience. I got the Nik collection when they made it free but haven't really explored it so trying out the detail extractor will be great. I've got a pretty busy week at work still so may not have time to give this another crack until the weekend.

John, Keith, Arthur, Joseph: thank you for the kind words and suggestions. On the sun position and lighting -- I need to do a better job of keeping this in my head in the field instead of kicking myself later!

Sincerely thank you all again for commenting and critiquing -- it's really great to get feedback on the specifics and details that make the image.

[Isaac Grant]

My pleasure. You will find that all on this site are extremely helpful. There are plenty here that know a great deal about photography and people that literally wrote the book in some cases.

The detail extractor is quite powerful and can easily make your shot quite crunchy if applied too strongly. Where it says control points there is a little arrow just to the left of there. Click on the arrow and lower the opacity to no more than 50%. Most times 25% should be more than enough. Play with you image to see what it does for it but you want it to just bring out that little bit of extra detail.