Here's one of my favorite birds. Image comes from the south west coast of Norway. Data: ISO 100, 1 / 200, F4, 0 Canon 1D MK III, 500mmL F4, 0 IS. Date 25 July 2009
Sharp, nice head position, good shooting angle,nice amount of habitat, without distracting from the subject.
Wish I could see the feet. I might consider going about 1/4 stop brighter. Might have to do a bit of recovery on a bit of the forehead, but I think the overall image would display better.
Sharp with a good exposure. Too bad he did not stand on top of one of the rocks.... You are getting closer to a profile.... Most of my favorite shorebird images have the bird roughly parallel to the back of the camera.
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Beautiful bird - detail about the head and colors are excellent. I agree with Randy about brightening the image. As Arthur points out, would have been nicer if the bird was parallel to the sensor.
In a situation like this, with the bird at an angle (happens to me a lot), I stop down to get more of the bird in focus. You had room to do that (increase the ISO setting from 100 to 400 and you could have shot at f/8 with the same exposure. At ISO 800, you could have shot at f/11 and the entire bird except for the tail would probably have been in focus. Yes, more of the BG would have been in focus too, but you can blur the BG in PS. Just a suggestion...