This image was captured in March 2019 at Gatorland in Orlando, Florida. After photographing at the rookery in the alligator breeding pond the walkway followed when leaving the park passes a display of parrots. Most time is it is not crowded I stop to give them a few clicks. The backgrounds and perches are not the great but working tight can solve some of the problems. I know the focus falls off but what I thought should be sharp is shown (only 7 mm/0.276 inches depth of field). Shooting at a smaller aperture would not have affected the depth of field significantly because of the distance of 2 meters from the bird, also the display is in the shade thus the shutter speed of 1/250. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED, image captured at 330mm
1/250 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 1400 Auto 1 WB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2020 and Neat Image for noise reduction
Cropped slightly for composition and presentation
P.S. Learn more about Gatorland in the BAA Middle Florida Photography Site Guide that Artie and I co-authored. It is available at this link The BAA Middle of Florida Site Guide
Last edited by Joseph Przybyla; 04-02-2020 at 07:52 AM.
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
Excellent colours and details, I am not surprised at the limited DOF.
As a slight aside I feel it would have been better if the image was 1200-1250px tall, unless you have a 32" monitor and I suspect relatively few do.
While it would be nice to have a bit more DOF across his face, we're drawn right to his eye and beak as is. So that's good. You were up against it with light anyway, and I understand your concern about shooting wider to keep background junk out.