Fresh Juvenile Sanderling

[Arthur Morris]

This image was created on 7 September 2021 at Nickerson Beach. While seated on dry sand at the top of a berm, I used the hand held Sony FE 600mm f/4 GM OSS lens with the Sony FE 1.4x Teleconverter(at 840mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ISO 1250. Exposure determined via Zebras with ISO on the Thumb Wheel: RawDigger showed that the exposure was nearly perfect, about 1/6 stop too dark. 1/2000 sec. at f/7.1 (stopped down 2/3 stop) in Manual mode. AWB at 7:41am on sunny morning.
Tracking: Zone/AF-C with Bird-Eye/Face Detection performed perfectlyby nailing the bird’s eye.

Below from the blog post here.

Bird Behavior Tends to be Repetitive

I was sitting in the same spot that I created yesterday’s featured image, the screaming Ring-billed Gull. Two juvenile Sanderlings kept walking up to the top of the berm to rest. Then they would head down to the surf to forage a bit more. After that happened several times, I scootched about four yards closer to their resting spot and lo and behold, the came right back up. I made lots of very sharp portraits, but the birds were both angling slightly toward me. I made this image as one of the young birds reacted to being buzzed by a skimmer — note the flying sand. It flew back down to the beach, but hand holding at 840, I wound up clipping the attempted action shots.

As for the image, don't be shy; all comments are welcome and appreciated.

with love, artie

[Brian Sump]

Artie, excellent pose and eye contact. The foot flip of the sand is super!

I like the layered sand effect.

That said, just a touch more contrasty than I'm used to from you.

A bit of sharpening halo above the head and looks like your canvas add in lower right corner messed up?

[Jonathan Ashton]

Looks good but for me the blacks are too dense probably a consequence of the initial exposure.

[Kurt Bowman]

I really like the kicked up sand, it adds a lot of movement to this. I see what Brian is saying about more contrast then normal but I think it's just close being too much, nothing really over the edge for me.

[Arthur Morris]

Artie, excellent pose and eye contact. The foot flip of the sand is super!

I like the layered sand effect.

That said, just a touch more contrasty than I'm used to from you.

A bit of sharpening halo above the head and looks like your canvas add in lower right corner messed up?

Thanks Sumps Scores. Was not added canvas ... I moved the seaweed ... I repaired that. I reduced the contrast and added a bit of detail to the whites on the neck.

with love, artie