It's been a ridiculous dry spell for me, but I finally got something I was happy with. As I was staring at this yellowlegs across the pond and cursing myself for leaving my teleconverter in the car, he kindly decided to land on a stump 15 feet in front of me (for 5 seconds) allowing me to get this shot.
Shot with Nikon D90, 200-400mm f/4 @ 400mm; 1/1600s; iso 500; evaluative metering -0.7
The green areas are floating vegetation - I decided to leave it there as I thought the BG was a little too sterile without it.
I like the composition a lot. Good placement in the frame, nice use of stump. The only thing I would do would be to try to lighten th eback of the bird to counteract the light coming from the right.
LIke the light and the fact you didn't create a boring, sterile background (IMHO). I feel the crop is too (almost) square-ish for my taste. Nicely posed and well captured. Thanks for sharing. :)
Hi Graham, super image of the LYL. I don't mind the squarish comp. Neat perch, too bad it didn't perch on the highest part. I'm itching for some shorebird photography, so I'm happy to see that some are showing up in accessible areas! JP trail?
Nice pose, bkground and perch. Good eye contact. The head looks sharp, but there is something about the body feathers that seem strange. A lack of contrast perhaps?
Anyway, a great catch and I suspect the capture is fine but might need slight change in processing.
Thanks for the comments folks.
Allen - I've actually applied a fair bit of shadows adjustments to the back to brighten it up already.
Ben - perhaps this is what's causing the body feather to look strange. I'm curious if anyone else sees what Ben is seeing, since I'm unable to.
Dan -Yep, JP trail is the locale. Other than this individual, it was very quiet but hopefully it's a sign of things to come.
Very nice shot, colors and detail is pretty good. I would prefer slightly larger crop.
Feathers look just fine, they may need a bit more sharpening. The tail is slightly OOF due to depth of field. Belly whites exposed nicely.