oystercatcher

[Sid Garige]

Estero Lagoon, Fl
Canon 7D | 500mm F4 + 1.4x | 1/1250 | F8

[noelle zaleski]

Great portrait Sid, Nice exposure and detail.

I like that you have captured the nose hole.

[Tom Redd]

Great portrait and excellent feather detail. The BG is pleasing.

[Lorant Voros]

Lovely detail, great exposure and vivid colors. I could never get this close to these guys. Well done.

Lorant

[arash_hazeghi]

excellent close up view of the feather details! great work Sid

[Sidharth Kodikal]

Phenomenal detail and exposure. Perfect comp for this portrait. Superb work Sid!

[Chad Caswell]

Little Estero, I love that place, Noelle and I will be there in July Great image Sid, love the nose hole

PS check FM I just bumped your Tern thread.. I missed that one LMAO

Chad

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Excellent Sid, tight comp works so nicely, love the detail and also like the nose hole. Great colour as well TFS

[Michael Wolf]

Outstanding detail! I love that the portrait shows all the colors of this beauty as well.

[Joe Senzatimore]

Detail is magnificent. Love the comp. Beautiful exposure also.

[Morkel Erasmus]

immaculate detail here Sid! lovely...

can imagine this being a tricky exposure too
our Oystercatchers are all black with red beaks

[Norm Dulak]

Talk about up close and personal! This image really brings this interesting bird to us. Wonderful color, composition and sharpness, and great feather definition throughout the tonal range.

Well done!

[Troy Lim]

Where was this taken? I couldn't believe how close you got to the bird!

[Marina Scarr]

Truly great portrait of this male AMOY, Sid. You have wonderful details here.

[Arthur Morris]

Love the feather detail esp in the BLACKs. Great sharpness with a good EXP. Head is angled slightly away and I wish that the bird had just bathed and washed the salt off its beautiful bill.

[stuart wanuck]

as always sid nice capture!

[Craig Brelsford]

. . . I wish that the bird had just bathed and washed the salt off its beautiful bill.

I don't mind the salty bill, nor do I mind the grains of sand in the plumage. This shot is technically solid in every single area, so why not leave in a bit of nature's imperfection? I only wish I had more of the story behind your image. How'd you manage it? Were you on your belly, waiting? Were you in a hide? Do you have some kind of a thing with birds that makes them love you and snuggle up close to the camera?

[Adams Serra]

Beautiful image Sid.
Nice composition and feather detail.

[Arthur Morris]

I don't mind the salty bill, nor do I mind the grains of sand in the plumage. This shot is technically solid in every single area, so why not leave in a bit of nature's imperfection? I only wish I had more of the story behind your image. How'd you manage it? Were you on your belly, waiting? Were you in a hide? Do you have some kind of a thing with birds that makes them love you and snuggle up close to the camera?

Craig, I am not a big fan of nature's imperfections. Had the bird taken a bath, it would have had a clean bill and no sand in the plumage. For me, that would have simply resulted in a more beautiful image..... Way back when my first and only photography instructor once said to me about a disheveled bird, "Go find a better subject." That was more than 27 years ago and has worked for me. You are free to like what you like as am I :).

[Arthur Morris]

BPN member Chris Baker sent me an interesting e-mail with regards to this image. I brought the JPEG into PS and found that the bill and eye were completely blown due to over-saturation. For the repost here I added 100 points of CYAN to the REDs and then de-saturated the REDs by 20 points. Much better to handle such problems either in conversion of in PS with the master file.....

BTW, no more blinkies in the repost.

[Arthur Morris]

I should have mentioned that you can play around with the REDs and YELLOWs on the HSL tab while converting images like this.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Sid, love your portraits. the colors and the bird and the blue BG create a terrific combination. Well done on getting close and parallel....good call on f-stop.

w.r.t to colors sat, I'd probably prefer something between the two posts....however, I've never seen this bird...so hard for me to say what's realistic.

[Arthur Morris]

KD, If you work on the colors from the get-go and are aware of the potential problems it is possible to get them a bit brighter. Not so when working sort of after the fact with a JPEG.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

KD, If you work on the colors from the get-go and are aware of the potential problems it is possible to get them a bit brighter. Not so when working sort of after the fact with a JPEG.

got it. thx.