High Island, Smith Oaks Rookery - Spoonbill

[Martha Weaver]

This flying Roseate Spoonbill was taken late Saturday afternoon at Smith Oaks Rookery in High Island, Texas. It's a photographers paradise right now!

I used a Canon 7D, iso 100, f5.6 @ 1/1000, 350mm with my Canon 100-400 is lens. 30.3 meters distance

A small bit of curves to heighten contrast, 20% crop. (80% of picture shows here) I did clone out a distracting bare twig sticking out into the sky above the bird.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Martha, nice flight capture of this lovely bird! Texas is the place to be right now it seems.

Some things to consider... Composition-wise, the bird feels too small in the frame to my eyes. I would crop from the top and right to make it larger. You could have upped the ISO in this light to gain shutter speed and maybe get a sharper capture, as the bird seems soft to me. Suggest that you clone out the twigs in the left, especially where they intersect the feet. You did a good job with the flight capture - just need to keep working on the details!

[John Chardine]

Hi Martha- Agree with Kerry. Although the 7D can make noise at higher ISOs, you should be able to use ISO 400-800 with impunity. Birds in flight are a real challenge and you need all the techs on your side! Moving from ISO 100 to 400 would have allowed you to:

1. Stop the lens down from wide open by a stop to f8 which would give you better depth of field and I know that the 100-400 generally performs better stopped down a little (most lenses do), and

2. Increase your shutter speed to 1/2000s which would give you much more power to stop subject motion and camera shake.

I'm wondering about the cause of the softness of the bird and wonder if the posterisation I'm seeing in the background may be affecting the subject? Martha- does the subject look reasonably sharp out of the camera? Can you remember how much jpeg compression you needed to use to get the image under 200K?

[Martha Weaver]

I appreciate your suggestions. I agree with you on the crop, especially from the top. It would definitely improve it.
And, yes, I should have had the iso much higher! I was just not thinking!

As for the small branches sticking out from the left; that bird had tried to land on those branches, and was just launching off them as this picture was taken. We were all laughing at the way those big birds would sit on the tiniest branches. (As mentioned, hurricane Ike really did a number on this rookery, and there aren't many large limbs left) For that reason I dickered over whether to clone those out.
In view of that, what do you think? Better to get rid of them, since no one who sees it knows the story behind the little branches? Or leave them in as part of the story?

[Kerry Perkins]

I appreciate your suggestions. I agree with you on the crop, especially from the top. It would definitely improve it.
And, yes, I should have had the iso much higher! I was just not thinking!

As for the small branches sticking out from the left; that bird had tried to land on those branches, and was just launching off them as this picture was taken. We were all laughing at the way those big birds would sit on the tiniest branches. (As mentioned, hurricane Ike really did a number on this rookery, and there aren't many large limbs left) For that reason I dickered over whether to clone those out.
In view of that, what do you think? Better to get rid of them, since no one who sees it knows the story behind the little branches? Or leave them in as part of the story?

Martha, my view is that the branches alone don't tell the whole story and end up looking out of place. Had your capture shown the branches being pushed down by the bird, it would be more obvious, but to me the moment captured is in-between "all the way clear" and "just taking off". I understand your thinking, but I'm not sure that someone looking at the image without your commentary would understand the situation. It is tough to think of all these things in the heat of the moment, but that is one of the lessons of wildlife photography - wait forever then think fast!