Neusiedler See National Park #1: Little Ringed Plover

[Markus Jais]

This is the first shot of several I want to share with you from my trip last week to the Neusiedler See National Park in Austria.

To get this shot I lay down on the ground and used a bean bag to put the lens on. Normally I photograph there from the car in order to not scare away other shorebirds like Black-tailed Godwits and to not ruin the day for other photographers.
At this time there were only the plovers which can easily be approached outside of the car and there were no other photographers around.
That allowed me to follow Artie's advice and get down as low as possible.

EOS 7D, 4/500L, 1.4x, ISO 200, f6.3, 1/800
cropped a little from all sides to get a better composition (resulting image about 13 MP).

Hope you like the first shot in the series. Any comments on how to improve it are more than welcome.

Markus

[Ilija Dukovski]

I love that eye-ring. The color stands out nicely.
I like the image very much, great low angle, HA, eye contact.
I think it needs a bit of CW rotation. Also not sure about the
plants on the left and the dark patches low at the right edge.
Other than that I like it very much.

[Stephen Stephen]

Markus, I too like the eye ring, low angle and sharp detail. Perhaps it's just me but the image looks like it needs a touch (2 degrees?) of clockwise rotation.

[denise ippolito]

Markus, Really nice pose,low angle and sharpness. The band at the right I might lighten. Agree w/ rotation. I never saw one of these in person and it is so cute. I hope to photograph it someday.:)

[Stu Bowie]

Excellent detail Markus, sharp, and getting down and dirty has paid off. I agree this needs a slight CW rotation. Well captured.

[arash_hazeghi]

Very nice shot Markus, you really need to be low angle for these guys and you did well. details are great just need slight cw rotation.

[Markus Jais]

Thanks for all our nice comments. I agree about the rotation. Here is a fixed image. I should have fixed this in the field (the 7D even has an electronic level) but I just didn't think about it.

[Ofer Levy]

Very sharp with excellent detail. Nice low angle too. I like the fixed rotation in the repost but I think it will be nicer to keep the reeds in the frame.

[James Salywoda]

I like your repost Markus a very nice shot excellent pose and nice low angle the detail looks great too.

[christopher galeski]

very nice shot Markus,nice detail,good low angle,think I would remove the plants inthe bottom left.thanks.