Marbled Godwit - Just Landed

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Photographed at Seacliff State Beach south of Santa Cruz, CA. This was handheld with the Canon 500F4IS which I had rented for a week. What a sweet lens but so heavy. Well, whom do I tell...

Note, this was on a downward sloping beach. :o

Thanks for looking! JR

Canon 40D, 500F4IS, 1/3200s, F4.5, ISO-400, EC +0.3, Eval Metering

[Fabs Forns]

Very nice pose, I see the slope. Beautiful light, the plumage looks like it could use some more detail, certainly not from hand-holding at 1/3200...
Is is a crop?

[Tom Grey]

Hi John! Really a nice pose, and I like the composition. I admire your restraint and the resulting delicate pastel-ish look in the sweet light, but I would be tempted to try darkening the midtones a little -- see if you could get a bit more pop and still keep natural-looking colors.

[Blake Shadle]

Pretty gutsy shooting that big gun handheld at f/4.5!! When doing action photography, I'm normally leaning toward f/6.3... Anyhow, very nice composition and capture. I know why you mentioned the slope... you didn't want 15 comments suggestion some CW rotation :D ;)

[Glenn Bartley]

This is really wonderful. The pose is fantastic and the setting is really nice. It needs a bit of CW rotation. I think you could also bump up the saturation quite a bit (especially teh reds) and maybe even move the middle slider in the levels adjustment box a few points to the right (0.97?)

[Stephen Stephen]

Nice image John. The bird looks as if it's doing ballet and it's position fits the composition nicely.

[Robert O'Toole]

Hi John,

what can I say I love the image. The pose the comp the water bubbles.

I would recommend to select the underside of the wings, face and body, takes 1.5 - 2 seconds, and just darken them in cruves, it would bring out more detail and color. Let me know if you want more details.

Robert

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Hi all,

Thanks so much for your kind comments and constructive feedback. My photoshopping skills are even more basic than my photography skills but I certainly will try your suggestions. Maybe I'll repost the image on the weekend.

Fabs: yes, this is a crop to about 2000*1000 pixels.

Tom: great to see you here on this board! I will try to selectively darken them a bit.

Blake: this was my second day with the 500F4IS. I had no real appreciation yet how thin the DOF really is. :) But in this case the guy was far enough away that it didn't matter too much.

Glenn: I will do my best to incorporate your suggestions.

Robert: I wish it would take me only 1 - 2 seconds. :)