Denise and her private-day client Jon Saperia and I stayed with a family of Piping Plovers this morning for about two hours. Most of the time we photographed them from great distances with 2X and stacked TCs.... When they made their way down to the tide line to feed we sat and at times had the three tiny chicks--about eight days old--walk right in front of us. (One of the four disappeared over-night.) That's where the frustration came in; they are so, so fast and unlike the parents--step, step, step, stop, step, step, step, stop, they use a slightly different strategy; run, run, run, pause for a millisecond, run, run, run..... Most times when they were close and right down sun angle I could not even get them in the viewfinder much less focus and fire.
This image was created with the Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X II TC, a 25mm extension tube (for a bit of additional magnification), and the EOS-1D Mark IV on the Gitzo 3530 LS with the Mongoose M3.6. ISO 400. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/1000 sec. at f/8 set manually after histogram and blinkies check.
Central sensor crop from below and behind. The usual beach clean-up.
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