A Rush of Wings

[Richard Stern]

Semipalmated Sandipers at Grand Pre on the upper Bay of Fundy this week. Hard to know whether to crop the original, but I settled on the uncropped but re-sized version in the end. Spot the White-rumped!

NIKON D300, 80-400VR
Exposure time : 1/2500 s
F number : 7.1
Exposure program : Aperture priority
ISO speed rating : 800
Exposure bias : 0.7
Metering mode : CenterWeightedAverage
Flash : Flash did not fire.

Thanks for comments,

Richard

[Randy Stout]

Richard:

Tremendous sense of motion/activity here. It is very hard to handle the crops on these images. If you could have zoomed out a bit to get a clean bottom edge, that would have helped, as I think the top edge works well.

Basic exposure looks good. Interesting to see the breaking waves through the flock.

Cheers

Randy

[Tony Whitehead]

Crop works for me as presented, Richard. The 2 clear birds at the top make it for me.

[Arthur Morris]

White-rumped upper row just left of center. The two main problem here are:
1-the harsh light. Soft light, clouds, anything is better than sun here, especially off-angle sun.
2-for these to be highly successful, focus needs to be on the closest birds. Otherwise, as here, o-o-f birds in front of the plane of focus are distracting.

Best tips: predawn or clouds and think slow or very slow shutter speeds.

Also: Most of the birds are angled slightly away from you into the wind.

[Norm Dulak]

Richard:

The energy displayed by that avian mass is exciting! I like the crop and agree that the two clear birds at the top add extra interest.

I have no problem with the less than perfect lighting conditions or positions of the birds. It's too bad that we can't control when and how bird flights occur. TFS.:)

Norm

[Arthur Morris]

Norm, Yes, the image depicts the energy of the flock, and flight, and while we cannot control the quality and direction of the light, when birds fly, or the direction of the wind, those factors play major roles in determining the success of an image. If you like images of birds in less than ideal positions that were created in contrasty light that is your choice. But it does not make the image above a strong image.

[Norm Dulak]

Norm, Yes, the image depicts the energy of the flock, and flight, and while we cannot control the quality and direction of the light, when birds fly, or the direction of the wind, those factors play major roles in determining the success of an image. If you like images of birds in less than ideal positions that were created in contrasty light that is your choice. But it does not make the image above a strong image.

Arthur:

It's OK to say how images could have, should have been captured. But isn't it also a good idea to suggest how an image as presented for critique could be improved? In this example wouldn't it have been nicer, if you have a problem with the harsh light, to suggest post-processing in Photoshop with Shadows and Highlights, to tone down the highlights and enhance the shadowed areas?:)

Let's all work together to help photographers to post better images, instead of only lamenting what could have been.

Norm

[Arthur Morris]

No lamenting here but a good point. Problem is that Richard has done a good job of reducing the contrasting. And there is nothing that we can do do change the point of focus after the fact. Part of a good critique includes suggesting ways to improve images made either at the same location or in similar situations while in the field.

[Norm Dulak]

Arthur:

Let's all work together to help photographers to post better images, instead of lamenting what could have been.

Norm

Arthur:

Your point on focus is well taken. But while your observations on time of day and cloud cover might have relevance to single birds, I doubt they have much applicability to mass flights of birds. You catch them when you can, and I see no reason to avoid taking the picture simply because conditions were not optimal.

Beyond that, I refer to my quote above and rest my case.:)

Norm

[Arthur Morris]

I have been pretty much doing that in all of my 14,047 posts (and counting).

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Richard, as others have said, loved the energy in this image a lot. Thx for shairng.

[Richard Stern]

Hi, and thanks for all the interesting and instructive comments. Here at Grand Pre one can only see flocks of shorebirds like this at high tide, which, the day I could get there, occurred in mid-afternoon on a sunny day. So I did what I could. Having said that, I agree with Arthur that one should always strive for improvement. Perhaps the next day I can get there at high tide the light will be better. Arthur, your mention of softer light and slower shutter speeds are the learning points I can take from these comments, and isn't that one of the purposes of the forum?

Richard

[Arthur Morris]

Very much so. Good luck on a cloudy day with piles of birds in flight.