Sony A850~Sony70-400G@400mm~ISO 1600~1/1250sec~F5.6~Manual Exposure~HH~11-1-2010-Texas City Dike~CS5
The Texas City Dike, which had been closed for 2 years, has always been the best place to photograph oystercatchers in the area (IMO). Comments and critique welcomed. regards~Bill
A lovely image, Bill! A little more ss on the wings (or a little less depending on what look you're going for) is the only thing I can think to comment on here. Good HA, body pose, & wing position. There's good detail and sharpness from top to bottom.
As I looked at this I thought about the color of the BG and how plain it is and that made me wonder what this would look like either as a black and white or a duotone image with the red/yellow eye and beak masked to show through. ??? Might be worth a look.
Nice shot Bill - you captured an excellent pose here. I personally like the background as is - it works well with the black & white of the bird and really help the bill and eye to pop. I agree with Julie on the shutter speed, but understand you were already wide open at ISO1600 (next time!). On my uncalibrated monitor at work here, the whites on the flank look pretty hot - you may wish to see if you can recover a little more detail in that area.
Thanks Julie, Jeff, Pat. Jeff: good observation about the ISO and wide open aperture. I was at a limit, the sky was overcast with intermittent rain, upping the ISO a noise problem, and lowering the SS a problem with image sharpness. I would have preferred at least 1/1600 sec here, but had to drop it a bit.
I tried to coax a bit more detail from the whites with little success. They were not clipped, but detail is reduced with low contrast light, since there are no shadows. Getting closer to the subject is what does work for more detail in such lighting, but wasn't possible here.
Jules; motion blur of wings is cool, but requires a bunch of "attempts" to get it right since it has such a low probability of success. I had the opportunity to take about 6 shots of OCs in flight that day.
As to your suggestion I converted the image to B&W and used a history brush to paint back in the eyes and beak. Good idea.
regards~Bill
American Oystercatcher
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