Black-bellied Plover

[Bill Dix]

D90; 80-400 VR @ 370mm. ISO 400, f/7.1 @ 1/1600s. Matrix metering @ -0.7 EV. HH. Essentially full-frame (cropped 4% from width and height for comp).

Barnegat Lighthouse on Monday. Wished for a slight head-turn, but he walked to the end of his rock and flew off without a glance in my direction. Also would have liked slightly more critical sharpness, but I believe this is all the USM it will take. C&C appreciated.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the walking pose, eye contact, angle and BG and only wish for a bit more head turn toward you.

[Dave Blinder]

Great comp, lighting, and exposure Bill. Yes, a better HA is desired, head and belly look oversharpened on my monitor.

[Mital Patel]

oh wow another 80-400 user. excellent shot bill. well this is just awesome capture with perfect light. though some artifacts of compression is clearly visible and can be an easy fix with NR or may be selective lens blur.. seem to be pretty close ..

[Bill Dix]

oh wow another 80-400 user. excellent shot bill. well this is just awesome capture with perfect light. though some artifacts of compression is clearly visible and can be an easy fix with NR or may be selective lens blur.. seem to be pretty close ..

Thank you Mital for the kind words, and the suggestion. I had tried a pass of Topaz DeNoise on the jpeg file before posting but it didn't help too much. On reading your comment I tried a pass of Topaz DeJPEG which did remove at least some of the jpeg artifacts, as you might see from the repost. Unfortunately the focus point is on the bird's shoulder rather than the eye. As for the lens: I sometimes feel outgunned here by the big lenses, but I'm still learning; and until I feel I've achieved all that this lens can offer (which will never happen) I'm happy to keep it in my arsenal. Again, thanks for looking and commenting.

[arash_hazeghi]

Nice Bill, the Plover is sharp and well exposed like the walking pose too. As for the artifacts in BG I recommend making a mask for BG only and then apply Gaussian blur with radius 0.6-1 to get rid of blotches.

TFS

[Bill Dix]

Nice Bill, the Plover is sharp and well exposed like the walking pose too. As for the artifacts in BG I recommend making a mask for BG only and then apply Gaussian blur with radius 0.6-1 to get rid of blotches.

TFS

Thank you Arash. The BG is the ocean with some wavelets. I did nothing to it except tone down the highlights a bit and run a pass of NR. I'll try a bit of Gaussian blur on it. I appreciate the suggestion.

[James Salywoda]

Really a beautiful shot Bill I love the stepping pose and the background is gorgeous.

[Harshad Barve]

Excellent image with nice compo , expo and lighting , liked the walking post and repost looks better
TFS