baby piping plover

[allanrube]

I did get to the beach yesterday morning looking for piping plovers. It was foggy and hard to see any small birds on the beach when I got there. It finally got bright enough to see a couple of adults. I took shoots and was set to pack up when I saw tiny movements. There were 5 chicks in the grass, the first I have seen this year. I waited about 25 minutes before a brave one left the grass to venture out on the beach.

D300s, 600 VR with 1.4 tc 1/800 f/5.6 iso400

[Chad Caswell]

Wow that is cute.. could use a tad Noise reduction, great moment captured right out of the egg

I believe that's the egg tooth we see :2

[dankearl]

Very nice, a simple mask with a gaussian blur treatment would fix the noise in the BG.
The BG is very nice otherwise.

[Arthur Morris]

Too cute. Nice EXP. Love those long legs. Any clue as to how old? Do not think that we are seeing the egg tooth....

Might this need a bit of CW rotation based on the eyes?

[Ofer Levy]

As much as I like the pose IQ is too low due to what looks like a very serious crop.

[Mark Young]

Very cute image of this chick.

[Randy Stout]

Alan:

Nice angle, like the ridges in the sand, agree about a bit of CW rotation.

More noise than I would expect with this camera and settings. Was it underexposed and brought up a lot, or a significant crop, as Ofer stated?

Little guys like this often play well as a small in frame subject, little guy against the world feel. So, if you have lots of canvas to work with, a much looser crop might work well.

The whites on his far left look a bit lacking in detail.

Cheers

Randy

[arash_hazeghi]

nice view of the delicate chick, there is some noise...

[Stu Bowie]

Good low perspective, and I like the fluffy detail. I agree this needs a touch of CW rotation. Apart from the eyes, the legs are leaning to the left. Another vote for some NR too.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Lovely cute pose and I like the ripples and textures in the sand. Lot of noise visible on the bird and the BG...Maybe like Randy said due to lightening a lot in PP or large crop. IQ has suffered...TFS Allan

[Humberto Ramos]

Great shot, this little ones are beautiful, agree with noise reduction on the BG...

[allanrube]

I made another copy for myself with nr in the bg.
The white without detail is just the way it came out. I did select the white and gave it the linear burn treatment. However, sometimes an image does not do well changing from tiff to jpg (quality 8 in PS to get under 200 kb.) This was one of those.
As to the IQ itself, I only added 1/6 of exposure in processing and the size as posted is 2/3 of the original.

[Ofer Levy]

As to the IQ itself, I only added 1/6 of exposure in processing and the size as posted is 2/3 of the original.

In this case there is something wrong in your PP workflow as this noise shouldn't be there when this is not a big crop nor was it under exposed.

[allanrube]

Here is another go at it.

[Dumay de Boulle]

Much cleaner and I like the crop better on the repost...Love the DOF...Hard to tell on the size of the reposted image if there is still noise in the bird (I think I still see a bit) But a huge improvement nonetheless!

[Arthur Morris]

Noise, IQ, and COMP are greatly improved in my book.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Good work on the repost Alan. I like the comp with all the space...I feel space always helps with chicks' shots. And it also shows the pattern of the sand waves more. Well done on the shooting angle and the exposure.

[Harshad Barve]

excellent image with nice shooting angle
TFS

[Chad Caswell]

Allan, Nice repost!

[Robert Holguin]

Wonderful shot. I really like the repost. Much cleaner. Great low angle and pose. Well done.

[Jim Fenton]

Cute and then some. Really like the repost :)

[allanrube]

Thanks for the comments on the repost. As Jim knows we are always trying to get close here in New England. Sometimes I interpret incorrectly to mean "get as close as you can."