Black Bellied PLover

[Stephen Stephen]

I met up with Dan Cadieux this morning and we were fortunate enough to spend some time with this accommodating Black Bellied Plover.

Canon 40D, Sigma 50-500mm at 500mm handheld. 1/2500 sec, f/6.3, ISO 400Cropped for composition to about 60% of full frame but I may have keep the bird too centred in the frame.

[Dan Brown]

Nice low angle and head angle Stephen! You were on your belly! A suggestion, with your high ss, you could have used f8 at 1/1500 and had a bit more dof and maybe more sharpness, although this looks very sharp to me. I think the added dof of f8 may give the illusion of more sharpness?

[Randy Stout]

Stephen:

Low angle works great here. I like the pose as well. The standard head angle would be parallel to the sensor plane in a look back pose, but I still think this works well here, you have great eye contact.
Agree about moving him a bit to the right in the frame. Might consider slight burning in of vegetation in LLC.
Dan has a valid point about DOF, but the counter to that is more vegetation would be in focus as well, so a trade off to my mind.

Cheers

Randy

[Stephen Stephen]

Thanks Dan and Randy. I definitely have enough space to reposition the bird so thanks for suggesting it. I could have used more DOF but was concerned about too much grass in focus.

[Daniel Cadieux]

It was nice bumping into you yesterday Stephen. This guy was ridiculously cooperative wasn't he...well worth the drive for you!! Nice low angle, and I like the surrounding vegetation. Lets do it again soon!!

[Stephen Stephen]

Thanks Dan for the comments. It really was a great trip although my neck is still sore from all the low angle images. Here's the re-cropped version.

[Mark Young]

Nice composition and angle, I like the angle of the birds head. Did you try a more side on approach that may have gotten rid of that oof and allowed to see more of the bird?

[Stephen Stephen]

Thanks Mark. Dan Cadieux and I were both crawling around on our bellies trying for angles on this bird. We had been in that position for nearly and 2 hours so I really wasn't in any shape to continue to move fast by that time. ;)