It's Amazing When That Happens

[Arthur Morris]

Sandhill Crane at sunset dancing with dead grasses

This image was created on 11 November 2022 down by the lake near my home at Indian Lake Estates, FL. While seated on the grass, I used the handheld Sony FE 200-600mm f/5.6-6.3 G OSS lens (at 426mm) and The One, the Sony Alpha 1 Mirrorless digital camera. ) The exposure was determined using Zebra technology with ISO on the Thumb Dial. ISO 5000. 1/1000 second at f/6.3 (wide-open) in Manual Mode. AWB at 5:46pm right at sunset on a mostly cloudy afternoon. RawDigger showed the exposure to be dead-solid perfect with the center of the sun ball over-exposed just a bit. Tracking: Zone AF-C with Bird Face/Eye Detection produced a sharp image. Be sure to click on the image to enjoy a high-res version.

I headed down to the lake on a totally cloudy afternoon twenty minutes before sunset. The western sky brightened a bit. I found two cranes just standing there. I sat down, and then the magic happened. Read the whole story in the blog post here.

I added canvas on the right (in several steps using Content-Aware Fill.

As for the image, all comments are welcome.

with love, arite

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Artie .... gorgeous image , love the colorful sunset and the silhuette .
Wish you would have caught him jumping ... to see the feet .

Love it and TFS

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks, Andreas. I had fifty frames of the bird inthe air that showed its feet. But I clipped the wings on every one. With a different approach to the processing we could have seen the feet, but I liked the silhouette.

a

[Andreas Liedmann]

Well that happens .... to all of us

[Volkan Akgul]

hi Artie,

congratulations.
very nice presentation

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

Fascinating image Artie. Love the silhouette and the colours in BG. Superb capture and nice solid techs too.

[dankearl]

You must have been ridiculously close to clip wings at 200mm full frame..... It looks fine without the feet, grass and sunset makes up for it.

[Arthur Morris]

You must have been ridiculously close to clip wings at 200mm full frame..... It looks fine without the feet, grass and sunset makes up for it.

Thank, Dan. The problem as is usual is that I was being too greedy ...

a

[Bill Dix]

Gotta love it when magic happens. Feet or no feet, it's a lovely image with great wings-up pose, trailing grass, and sunset. Well captured.

[William Dickson]

Super wow Artie.....The trailing grass adds so much.....The colours in the BG look good and the pose on the bird looks even better.....The hidden feet don't bother me here....so much more to look at...

Will

[Paul Burdett]

Gorgeous silhouette Artie. No nits from me.