Northern lapwing

[Tomasz Zawadzki]

Taken with:
Canon EOS 7D
EF400mm f/5.6L USM
ƒ/5.6
1/800
ISO 200

This one is from my early days of bird shooting when i didn't exactly know what i was doing when it comes to technical stuff like exposure etc. and while i was using the old 7D and 400 5.6.
But i had a nice place for shorebirds close to were I live. Unfortunately this place doesn't exist anymore, i miss it :(. Anyway i think i haven't posted it yet here and that was one of my favorite from those days.

Just a question regarding the Theme - for the pic to qualify does it mean it had to be shot exactly during that month? Because obviously this one wasn't. I just want to be sure what are the rules for the Themes if there are any.

[Arthur Morris]

I do not know the rules for the Themes. Dan will likely help soon. As for the photo, it is a beautiful bird in very sweet light. It looks as if you might have focused on the near wing as the feathers there look a bit sharper than the face ...

For the repost I removed some specular highlights on the bill and the mud and cleaned up the mud a bit. I sharpened the face selectively with a Contrast Mask. And I did some background smoothing with the Clone Stamp and a Gaussian blur.

All of the above and tons more is detailed in Digital Basics II :)

with love, artie

[Arthur Morris]

ps: i know the feeling when great places are destroyed for development ...

pps: in a perfect world, the bird would have been standing on top of the mud ridge so that we could see his feet. I would have been praying for him to do that :)

with love, artie

[Abhijit Deshpande]

Very Nice image. & Arthur's PP has made it a few notches better.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely shot Tom the colours are excellent. Artie's treatment to the head works nicely but I am not a fan of the background treatment, it looks too smooth and a bit smudgy in parts to my eye.

[Tomasz Zawadzki]

Thanks Arthur for the processing. I agree with Jonathan, i like the part on the head and i will try to redo that photo. I think the head looks a lot better after that contrast treatment. Thanks again.

[Glenn Pure]

Amazing looking bird Tomasz. Great iridescence on the wing and nicely handled tone and colour on the bird: in that regard, I like the OP a little better. The background is great although a little noisy. The RP has fixed that. I like the foreground and presentation in this composition too. Lots to like here and thanks for sharing.