Migrating Dowitchers

[kevin Hice]

Shot in a slough in Nd from my floatable blind. Should say a mud pit you would never know by the photo. I won't be going back as I got stuck in the spring. Water is evaporating fast daily. Get around fine in four inches of water but when it gets down to one or two inches starts getting dicey. Muck is any where from six to eighteen inches.
The longer you stand or sit in it deeper you go and I can tell you hard to pull your foot out. Waders want to come off.
Have shot thousands of frames and been about four times over the last week. Had lots of great set ups with hundreds of birds at times all around me. Dowitchers are pretty easy here. Had some Avocets mixed in with the bunch and very few frames of them just spooky won't let me near.
Processed with Dpp 4,Topaz Photoshop. Comments and critiques appreciated.
Canon 1DX 111
500 f/4 L Is 11
700 mm
Av 6.3
1/2000
ISO 6400

[dankearl]

Cool pose, I wish the reflection was better had a bit more head detail.. Feather is nice. There is some BG mottling and noise but still
nice PP for iso 6400.

[arash_hazeghi]

love the soft tones and the lone feather, love the calm water wish we could see the feet... finer details are bit smoothened by high ISO noise and NR but not bad. I am a bit puzzled by ISO-6400 the image doesn't look that dark and you had the sun in the sky so it must be from f/11...did you really need f/11 ? the bird was parallel to the back of the camera.

TFS

[kevin Hice]

Arash 6.3 Yes just went back and checked the info 6400 1/2000 6.3

[Jonathan Ashton]

The bird looks good and I like the colourful water, the noise doesn't trouble me a bit, the feather adds nicely to the scene.

[Arthur Morris]

DATPCA. Love the grabbing the feather preening pose along with the perfect head angle. And option at this exact instant would have been to point the lens a bit more to your right to move the bird to the left and get a bit more of the blue water on the right into the image.

with love, artie

[Arthur Morris]

ps: about 3 more weeks till the juvie long-bills show up.

with love, artie

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Kevin a lovely tranquil scene you have captured .
Bird fully concentrated on the preening business ... I love it , specially in combo with the single floating feather .
Tone and and color are looking very attractive to me ... personally I might temper the noise or grain ( whatever you want to call it) .

Cool image and TFS Andreas

[Bill Dix]

Wonderful preening pose with delicate feather-grab. Love the single feather. Beautiful water color (noise noted). Bird seems a bit greenish compared to what I expect of a Dowitcher color, but no one else mentioned it so I'm probably all wet; maybe the reflected light. Lovely shot.

[arash_hazeghi]

Arash 6.3 Yes just went back and checked the info 6400 1/2000 6.3

thanks still a bit puzzled such high ISO for such a bright scene … the scene brightness looks more like iso 800-1600 to my eye … was it manual exposure ? Did it overexpose by any chance ?

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Kevin, love the image. Nice preening post, soft pure background, and the feather on the water adds to the image. Thank you for sharing.

[kevin Hice]

Thanks Arash and I went back and looked at the info data. Originally the histogram was in the fifth box about quarter of the way and I thought it looked a little over exposed so I backed off a full stop in Dpp. It was in aperture priority. I thought It had too much noise for as well as I had it exposed for. I have been trying to push my exposures to the right more. In the field the histogram I thought looked good and the frame looked washed out. I guess I would rathe over expose and correct it in post. Again thanks for your comments.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks Arash and I went back and looked at the info data. Originally the histogram was in the fifth box about quarter of the way and I thought it looked a little over exposed so I backed off a full stop in Dpp. It was in aperture priority. I thought It had too much noise for as well as I had it exposed for. I have been trying to push my exposures to the right more. In the field the histogram I thought looked good and the frame looked washed out. I guess I would rathe over expose and correct it in post. Again thanks for your comments.

makes sense, but if the highlights become blown it won't work out well, with other modern cameras ETR concept does not exist anymore due to low sensor read noise, but with older Canon cameras may be still an issue.

[William Dickson]

Looking nice Kevin...A very pleasing image which is easy on the eye....Maybe just a touch CCW rotation...

Will

[John Mack]

Looks great. Love the preening pose and that green water reflection. Mmmmmm, that lone feather takes the cake.