NZ Dotterel

[Christopher Moses]

Hi again, this I took yesterday morning on the beach with the sun directly behind me on a beautiful day , and whereas usually the dotterels are relatively friendly, they were quite edgy due to the presence of every dog in auckland on the beach... I've tried to include as many of the tips I've learned so far as possible in this pic, although the head angle might be a few degrees off. The photo has minimal editing, and is not cropped.
40D + EF 75-300mm II
ISO 320
300mm
f/11
1/640

Thanks for any comments, much appreciated :D

[Don Railton]

Hi Christopher

I think you have done very well here. Exposure looks just about perfect and you have achieved a lovely background with the low angle. Its very sharp and a nice image. Does look like the head is on backwards however, but I am guessing you had nothing to do with that.... The only minor problem I can see is a few very faint 'dust bunnies', two are behind and above the tail and one in front of the bird at about shoulder height. Might be a slight blue tinge to the shadow under the bird as well, but my monitor is not calibrated.

Very well done

DON

[John Chardine]

Hi Christopher- I like the pose. Colours are beautifully warm and the BG complements the bird nicely. I would have perhaps moved to avoid getting that light brown OOF object in the BG at LR. I would consider cropping some off the left so that the bird is looking into the long side of the image. Nice work.

[Gordon McKechnie]

I really like this. Pose, exposure, detail, BG all look great (although I agree with John about preference for losing the light brown object in BG). And the head angle is fine IMO. Great pic!

[jack williamson]

Hello Christopher, I like this very much. All of the colors in this whole image work together nicely. The bird is posed well, it is sharp and well exposed.

Jack

[Asta Tobiassen]

This is a wonderful picture. The colors of the bird are beautiful and warm. I love the low angle. My only suggestion would also be to crop a little from the left, thereby moving the bird out of the center. Good work!

[Kerry Perkins]

Christopher, I think this is top-notch work and a sweet image! The pose, colors, exposure - all excellent. Absolutely gorgeous feather detail. Composition could be improved, and I include an example - done quickly so not perfect. I hope you don't mind... I extended canvas on the right, used "content aware fill" to fill it in from the existing image, and cloned out the offending whatever-it-is in the background. Painted out the blue cast to the shadow using the sponge tool set to "desaturate". I also added a round of noise reduction (Topaz Denoise) and a very slight amount of unsharp mask to offset the NR. Beautiful image and I wish it were mine.

[Svante Larsson]

A lovely image and I have to admit that I thought the original was very good but Kerrys update improves it significantly in my opinion.