Spotted Sandpiper

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Photographed earlier this month at Natural Bridges State Beach in Santa Cruz, CA. I've used the songs from iBird Explorer Pro on my iPhone to attract its attention.

Thanks in advance for any comments. Best, JR

Canon 40D, 500F4IS, 1/1000s, F6.3, ISO-800, Manual Exposure, Don't remember if handheld or with Gitzo/Mongoose

[Chantelle Voss]

Great photograph Joerg! Did you already have the Spotted Sandpiper in sight when you used the playback and it simply drew the bird in closer, or did the playback attract the bird in the first place? Thanks!

[Daniel Cadieux]

Yes, these guys are normally wary compared to other shorebirds (in my experience)...but they sure are fun to observe with their constantly bobbing tails!!

I really like the overall setting, but wish the OOF FG rocks weren't there (I bet you do too!). You may consider eliminating the white spot below the foot, and the other object on the perch (of course, that is if this fits your personal post-processing ethics.) Nice pose, and good job getting it close...

[Ben_Sadd]

You did very well to get this close, and apart from Daniel's points the composition looks good.

It could be just my laptop, but I wonder if the background could do with a little noise reduction?

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Thank you all for the kind feedback. Yes, I saw it before playing the song but from some distance. It then slowly approached closer to check me out but certainly was taking its time. The distance as recorded in the EXIF of the image above was 10 meters. In another image it was 7 meters away from me. It certainly helped though that I was low on the ground and that I've been sitting at that spot already for quite some time.

Generally, I find that the Spotted Sandpipers (there are two) at this location react relatively well to the songs from iBird Explorer Pro. Often, they fly closer (but always land still some significant distance away) or start calling themselves when I play a song for the first time. I was surprised to see once that the distance they're hearing the sound from can be larger than 50 meters - and that's with the puny speaker of the iPhone. That being said once they checked out the sound source and didn't find any kin they seem "saturated" for a while and don't come back in my experience when playing a song again. It takes sometimes 20 - 30 minutes before they react again.

And Ben, yes, noise is a problem with the 40D at ISO 800. I actually did noise reduction on the back/foreground and it looks okay before resizing and saving for web. But certainly something happened in the conversion which increased noise again.

Best, JR

[Arthur Morris]

A beautiful image and BKGR. After running NR on the BKGR you can add a .5 to 1 pixel Guassian Blur to the layer being sure not to mess up the edges. It can really smooth things out. Great work with the tape and thanks for the info.

Dan, The juvies of this species are at least somewhat more approachable on the west coast than the east. Thanks to Joerg I will try my tape on them at LJ Shores Beach. Just a wee bit less head turn would have been my wish, but I do love the image.

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Artie, Thanks for the - as always - pointed and constructive critique and especially for the suggestion how to improve the background "noise" issue. The image below has an additional gaussian blur layer with 1.5 pixels radius. Curious as to what you and others think about this version. Best, Joerg

[Arthur Morris]

Hey Joerg, I did not see much difference in your two versions and I liked this image so much that I gave it the full treatment. Applied Photoshop NR (5/0/55--thanks to Axel for that, and then a .5 pixel NR) to the whole image on a layer, then used a Layer Mask to erase the NR on the bird and the rock (thanks to Denise for that) and then and very carefully erased the edges. Then used a warped Quick Mask to lose the poop pile and finished it off with a QM and a contrast mask on the face and upperparts at my standard 15/65/0 (and lightened the same with Control M).

Not sure how my repost will look compared to yours as far as the noise but the differences were huge when I worked at 300%. We shall see how the JPEG looks in a second :)

(Most) of that described in Digital Basics and APTATS I. (All will be included in the OCT update.)

[Myer Bornstein]

Looking foward to the update

[Joerg Rockenberger]

Arthur, thanks for the effort to rework my image. Appreciate it. I don't see that much of a difference in the background but I do like how you brightened the face and wings (some slight color shift too?). Somewhat ironically I had actually used a level adjustment layer with a layer mask to make the bird a bit more contrast and darker. Your version now looks almost like my original before adding the level adjustment... :o

Best, JR

[Arthur Morris]

Arthur, thanks for the effort to rework my image. Appreciate it. I don't see that much of a difference in the background but I do like how you brightened the face and wings (some slight color shift too?). Somewhat ironically I had actually used a level adjustment layer with a layer mask to make the bird a bit more contrast and darker. Your version now looks almost like my original before adding the level adjustment... :o Best, JR

Hey Joerg, YAW. I agree. But even in the JPEG the difference is huge. The animated GIF compares your image in Pane 1 with my repost at 800%. (There are often color shifts when resaving JPEGs. When I run a contrast mask the dark tones are darkened so I hit Control M and pull the curve up a bit.

Please disregard the artifacting in my version--seeing that it is smoother will be evident.