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Thread: Sandhill Crane Sunset Silhouette

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    Default Sandhill Crane Sunset Silhouette

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    A sandhill crane looks to the sky for its mate as the sun sets behind distant mountains. The lake behind the bird is still frozen from the cold morning. Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge.

    Canon 5D Mark II, 500 mm f/4 L IS lens plus 1.4x TC. ISO 200, 1/2000 second at f/6.3. Crop to 17.7 megapixels.

    Roger

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    caseyargall
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    the colour is strong and i like the way you've composed it. silhouette works really well against the sunset.

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    Roger ,
    This is riot of colors , Simply awesome image
    TFS

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    Very powerfull image Roger, the textures of the water are just fantastic and I like the colors a lot. Composition works very fine :-)

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    Ofer Levy
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    Gorgeous! What was the white balanced you used?

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    As there were a lot of clouds around around, I had it on cloudy. Sunsets generally look better with a cloudy setting.

    It was an interesting evening. The color from the setting sun was only in a small area by the sun. Most photographers were to the south of me in a large crowd for a better angle on the birds with sun on them as they came in (this is at the northern crane pool at Bosque). But the wind direction was from the NE so the birds were still landing with the sun behind their back so not good light. Myself and two other photographers were in the silhouette region, with one photographer working the large mass of birds. The second photographer was in the area I wanted to be but moved down to the photographer crowd after just a few frames and before peak light. That left me a good 60+ feet to move around to get the best light behind the bird and allowing me to follow the birds around and keep the light nice.

    Where the image turns redder and where the bright spot is, is ice.

    AF was difficult. For example, if I tried to focus on the bird's head, the AF locked onto the brighter background behind the bird. This I understand as I've seen this happen many times; AF will prefer the brighter high contrast subject (and on multiple bodies I've used). So I focused on the water at the bird's legs.

    There is one optical effect in the image I don't fully understand. The water around the focus point is blueish. I thought this might be something to do with the bird above the water. But I also took a series of images moving the focus forward and back thinking I would merger them (e.g. with heliconfocus) for an extreme depth of field image. But as I moved the focus, the point of the more blue water moves with the focus point. This was not apparent visually, naked eye, or in he viewfinder that I can recall. So it may be a resolution effect where best focus resolves between the bright spots better, or a raw converter artifact (CS4 ACR), or a combination of both.

    Roger

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    Very nice...love the colour and texture from the ripples on the water!

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    BPN Viewer Dave Leroy's Avatar
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    Interesting looking photo and very nice. I really like the inclusion of the shadow. My eye was also drawn very quickly to the circular pattern of in focus waves which is I think also where the blue is you prefer to. Lovely pose. Well done. Dave

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    Roger, this is a very good image. I like the ripples followed by the smooth separation. Congrats!!

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    Publisher Arthur Morris's Avatar
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    Yes to strong, powerful, and awesome. I only wish that you had raised your tripod four inches. Anybody know why? Oh, I forgot spectacular.
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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Artie:
    the only things that jumps out at me in response to your question is:

    That it would eliminate the merge of the beak with the darker red background area, giving a bit cleaner framing of the bird.

    Randy

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    Bingo for Randy.
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    david cramer
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    Good advice, Artie. These seemingly little things do add up and make a difference. Every time I raise my tripod the darn crane extends its neck more.

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    Randy, Art,
    I agree. Unfortunately I had no time to do something like that. I was trying to get birds landing in silhouette, and when I saw this bird walking away from the group, I started following it, so I was constantly moving the tripod to keep the bright reflections in the center of the frame. The bird looked up and I had only a couple of seconds to get this shot, then other birds moved in and ruined the isolation and no second chance.

    Roger

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    Avian Moderator Randy Stout's Avatar
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    Roger:

    You did very well! I do enjoy studying photos so that if the chance presents itself, I will know what to do to capture an even better one!

    When in doubt, push the button!

    cheers

    Randy

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    Roger, I forgot to ask, how did you meter this?
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    Artie,
    Manual. With all the specular components and bright reflections off the ice, a meter reading I felt would be thrown off. I had previously done a few test frames to get the level correct.

    Roger

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    Thanks. Any idea what the exposure was relative to the suggested exposure? (I have long felt that that info could and should be included in the EXIF data....)
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    Hi Artie,

    To try and answer your question, I went back over my images. I looks like I was wrong about being in manual (I thought I remembered it correctly). I switched to manual after this image. I was in 35 zone evaluative metering with with zero compensation.
    Roger

  20. #20
    Nate Chappell
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    Beautiful silhouette Roger!

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    Quote Originally Posted by rnclark View Post
    Hi Artie, To try and answer your question, I went back over my images. I looks like I was wrong about being in manual (I thought I remembered it correctly). I switched to manual after this image. I was in 35 zone evaluative metering with with zero compensation. Roger
    Thanks Roger. The same thing happens to me often.... IAC, I do not know that camera at all but it would seem that you were not dealing with blasting, blinding highlights (else you would have needed a good bit of under-exposure).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Arthur Morris View Post
    Thanks Roger. The same thing happens to me often.... IAC, I do not know that camera at all but it would seem that you were not dealing with blasting, blinding highlights (else you would have needed a good bit of under-exposure).
    Artie,
    I agree; as I have worked with much more difficult water specular reflections. In this case the light was bright but not difficult to look at directly. The sun was in a clear spot just before it went behind the mountain, but the wind was just about ideal to make enough waves to cause many different angles to the light, so the zone reflecting the sun was very wide. The sun reflecting off the ice was even more diffuse. So the broad reflecting zone made it pretty uniform so the meter did pretty well. I still switched to manual sometime after this shot in concern the meter would be thrown off.

    Roger

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