Spoonbill Landing

[Blake Shadle]

This is a personal favorite of mine. I just love the blues, greens, grays, pinks... it was a great morning.

Thanks for looking.

Nikon D300 | Nikon 600mm | 1/1600 @ f/6.3 | ISO 400

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Blake, awesome angle and incoming pose. Loved the wingspread a lot. Killer shot. Not sure about the greens though. Might be personal preference though. Wish we had this bird here.

[Ed Prete]

These guys have such wonderful colors, one of my favorite birds... Have had some of my most enjoyable photo moments with these guys on the Hooptie. Would love to see an edited version with the mangroves either removed or toned down. Otherwise, outstanding pose and will watch for more, my friend!

[Glenn Bartley]

What a wingspread!

[ChasMcRae]

Love the full wingspread shot and dangling legs. Nicely colored bird.
Too bad the mangrove leaves overlapping the one wing tip.
I wonder what the next shot in this sequence looked like ?

[Stu Bowie]

Lovely landing posture, and I like the dangling feet. The colour of the spoonbill is amazing, with good backlighting through the wings. I would maybe run some NR on the BG. ( most noticable at the bottom of the image )

[Troy Lim]

Stunning shot...
Looks like harsh light yet it leaves on the right showing soft...an illusion...

[Arno Ellmer]

Beautiful timing and posture,Blake. Absence of leaves would have put it over the top.( Could remove with a lot of meticulous work )
Agree with Stu on some NR. Still excellent take !

[Blake Shadle]

(Could remove with a lot of meticulous work )
Agree with Stu on some NR.

You guys are definitely right about the noise. I noticed it as I was posting it, but I thought, what the heck I'd rather let people point that out (it has nothing to do with me being lazy lol).

I'm not very good with Photoshop. So typically, if it takes me more than 5 minutes, it hits the round file :)

Thanks for compliments and taking the time to comment.

[Hendri Venter]

What a lovely image. Noise mentioned but otherwise pretty much perfect.

[James Shadle]

A thought on noise.
1 It can be cleaned up.
2 It looks almost film like.
3 This is what I call shooting in to a mangrove cave. You must expose for the light pink feathers, allowing the shadow area to fall where it may.
The net result is a properly exposed Spoonbill and an under-exposed background, causing additional noise, requiring noise reduction.