I captured this image at a recent trip to Ft. De Soto County Park in Pinellas County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.
Nikon D500
Nikon 500mm PF + Nikon 1.4 III Teleconverter, camera and lens supported by a Oben carbon fiber monopod with a Wimberly MonoGimbal head
1/4000 F/8 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 900 Auto 1 WB, image captured at 700mm (1050mm 35mm Equivalent)
Post processed in Lightroom Classic, Photoshop CC 2022 and Topaz Denoise AI
Cropped slightly for composition and presentation
Joe Przybyla
"Sometimes I do get to places just as God is ready to have somebody click the shutter"... Ansel Adams
The exposure looks pretty good to me. I like the low angle and nice head turn. The waves almost appear sa pillowy clouds in the bg. I might be tempted to clean top the water a little. Nice work Joe!
Super shot Jo, the composition looks very good as does exposure, I really like the surf in the background. I do think however that some of the blacks are a little too dense.
f/8 was smart; you kept the everything from beak to tail in focus. Beautiful light. Excellent exposure and details. Black might be a bit heavy but that's not a deal-breaker and is easily fixed. This is where lower angle woulda really isolated the subject though. He looks great here but doesn't leap off the canvas as he would with more exaggerated bokeh in front and behind. A very nice shot though.
Looks good overall. I love the incoming wave at the top. Good whites. Blacks a bit dark, but not too bad for me either. SUbject a bit high in the frame IMO, and I would remove the one shell(?) touching the leg. Otherwise, good stuff!
I will be the odd man out here. The position of the breaking wave with the horizon line dissecting the bird is an image-wrecker for me. Furthermore, you should have raised the camera as there is too much (pretty ugly) foreground and not enough wave. Waiting for the front line of the wave was just in front of the bird's feet would have been a lot better. IMHO. Over the years I have done several blog posts on the importance of the position of breaking waves in our images. You can find one here but there have been more on the same subject since that one.
with love, artie
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