Grebe with a baby

[Ofer Levy]

1D Mark IV, Canon 600 f4 IS, x1.4, 1/300, f11, iso 1000, Canon EX 580, full wimberley, in chest deep water

Got this a few months ago here in Sydney.

About 75% of full frame

[Chris Martinez]

haha This is gold!!
The IQ is outstanding. Nice job not blowing the gape on the adult. The little one looks unbelievably adorable.

[Doug Brown]

Love how the baby is nestled in the curl of the adult's feathers. Good eye contact and detail in both birds. Don't know what the rest of the frame looks like but I would have been tempted to include the full reflection. Ideally it would have been nice to have perfectly smooth water on the right side of the frame.

Do you conceal yourself when you get into the water with the birds?

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Ofer, IQ is off the charts here. Incredible low angle, BG color, sharpness, exposure....perfect HA and the chick is like 10 cherries on top.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Nicely done ofer, Great expo, nice details and angle.. the little one adds greatly..

[Allen Hirsch]

Adorable image!

If mine, I might crop the bottom to remove the reflection of the partial head.

Do you use camo or other concealment to get this close in the water?

[John Guastella]

Just a lovely image! Techs perfect on my monitor, compositon/framing excellent. And as Doug points out, the chick nestled within the bird's feathers really makes the image. Minor nit: I would clone out the small twig emerging from the water to the right of the adult.

One of the nicest photos I've seen on this forum - well done!

John

[Tom Rambaut]

This is such a nice picture.As Chris said not blowing the coloring around the gape is a real plus. This is one of the best grebe photos i've seen.

[Ofer Levy]

Thanks for your comments and suggestions guys!
I did use a synthetic fabric to cover myself.

[Arthur Morris]

Stunning. Stunningly sharp on the adult's face. The whole REFL or possibly a VERT might have worked also. The vegetation to our right of the bird was bad luck where I come from.

[Jim Fenton]

Stunning image...

I would clone out the bit of vegetation and give a very slight CW rotation.

Love the pattern on the chicks face :)

[Arthur Morris]

Jim, Eliminating the stuff to the right of the bird would require quite a bit of work if it could be done nicely at all as their is lots of texture there....

[AlvanBuckley]

Beautiful image! Head angles are great too.
Too bad about the vegetation. It'll be a difficult clone job.

[Ofer Levy]

Thanks for your comments guys!
It is very easy to clone out the vegetaton but I feel that doing so will not improve this image.
Cheers,
Ofer

[DanWalters]

Love the low angle and great eye contact with the adult and chick.

[Doug Brown]

I did use a synthetic fabric to cover myself.

Thanks Ofer!

[Troy Lim]

Ofer...great shot...I keep tilting my head to the left..perhaps a tiny bit of CCW rotation?

[Simon Bennett]

Superb!!!!

[arash_hazeghi]

you know that I love this one!!!

[James Salywoda]

Awesome!!! Beautiful Image.