BB Plover Portrait

[allanrube]

Early morning. I am not sure if it needs rotation - I tried it a few time but left it this way.
D300s 600 VR with 1.4 tc
1/500 f/6.3 +.3 ec (auto) iso 200

[Randy Stout]

Alan:

The rotation looks fine to me. I like the subtle background, head angle.
The one thing that strikes me is the large mass off OOF shoulder/ wing area. Because it is fairly bright, and large in the frame, it tends to catch my eye.
You had a lot of room to trade ISO for DOF if you had time to experiment. When I am working a fairly stationary bird, I will often try a bunch of different settings to see what I can make of the opportunity.

Cheers

Randy

[Tony Whitehead]

Great head angle on this plover portrait, Alan. Cropping a chunk off the bottom would reduce the OOF area of wing and you could add to the left to get a more landscape crop. I agree with Randy's suggestion of trying different options at capture if the bird is in a co-operative mood. I would probably use ISO 400 as a base ISO with your setup as more SS with a long rig is helpful and it gives the option of more DOF at the same SS as you used here. D300s is pretty clean up to 800. Some selective sharpening of the eye may be worth a try.

[allanrube]

I think I will crop small off the bottom. Thanks Tony.

Randy, I agree with what you are saying in theory. In this case the plover just stopped, popped up, and then continued on its merry way. I did not think in terms of multiple shots at different apertures. Perhaps I should have.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Fantastic closeup and nice details! Rotation looks OK to me too. I would crop to above your name to give the body a wider base to anchor itself on the bottom edge - seems like it could rock forward as is with the current thinner base. I would also select the eye's pupil and make it darker. All else looks great!

It could be just the pose, but the elongated, thin (almost dove-like) neck may suggest Golden Plover? Maybe someone else can chime in...

edit: I typed as you did, so I see you agree on a crop from below...sorry for the repetition :-)

[Arthur Morris]

Needs some rotation but I am not sure which way :) The big mistake was in the field by working at f/6.3 instead of at f/13 at ISO 400. The rule is: you need to go for more DOF when the subject is close and large in the frame....

[Mark Young]

It could be just the pose, but the elongated, thin (almost dove-like) neck may suggest Golden Plover? Maybe someone else can chime in...

It doesn't look like a Pacific Golden Plover. I don't know about other Plover species though. I took an almost identical image of one last night, which I'll post as a comparison, but in the meantime I have a number of PGP images on my blog if you wanted to check out the ID.

[Arthur Morris]

I am 99% sure that the large bill = black bellied. Alan, do you have an image of the whole bird? I am betting that if you do the rear flanks are white without any barring and also that the bird has a vestigial rear toe....