The spoon-billed sandpiper is a dying species. The number of individuals may be as low as 200; experts expect the species to be extinct within a decade or so. After days searching at our spot three hours north of Shanghai, my team finally found this individual, still in breeding plumage. (Note the two missing primaries on the right wing, evidence of molting, and thus a fit with our September theme.) The bill of the spoon-billed gives this iconic species its name, but in this image the spatulate shape is only partly evident. Despite that, I chose to display this shot because the wings stretching upward are poignant to me. It’s as though this bird represented all spoon-billeds, and that like angels they are stretching their wings toward heaven, as they prepare to depart the earth forever.
Device: Nikon D3S
Lens: VR 600mm F/4G
Focal Length: 850mm (used 1.4x TC)
Aperture: F/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/500
Exposure Mode: Aperture Priority
Exposure Comp.: +0.33
ISO Sensitivity: ISO 4000
Metering Mode: Center-Weight
Subject Distance: 18.8 m
Other notes: Image shot handheld, as I was lying flat on my belly in the mud; vibration reduction on.
Photoshoppery: As it was late and the bird was constantly moving, I upped the ISO to 4000. The D3S does a nice job at that level, but there still was some noise. To eliminate the noise, I opened the raw file twice in Camera Raw. The first time, I drove Luminance all the way right, to 100; I then opened the file in Photoshop and renamed it. I then opened the original file again in Camera Raw, and pulled Luminance back to 0. I opened that file, traced out the spoon-billed, and pasted it onto the other file, which had the smooth, noise-reduced BG. Have I come upon a solid technique for noise reduction, or is my method still amateurish? Your critiques are welcome.
Last edited by Craig Brelsford; 09-03-2011 at 11:19 PM.
Wow ! What a beautiful bird !! Nicely captured ...am sure can take some brightening . Just 200 in the world .....dont think it will take a decade for it to be extinct ....with the mad development??? we see around the world !!!
Craig, thank you for the species info. Very interesting. Also thank you for taking the time to explain the PP. The noise reduction looks good for 4000 ISO. You may have lost some detail in the image, but the noise is low. I am no expert, still learning lots here, so I will wait for the more advanced to weigh in, but looks nice to me. TFS
A rare bird indeed and a great pic Craig!
RSPB here in UK has been trying hard along with others like WWT to raise awareness of the plight of these so have read quite a bit
You have an excellent shot in this and we can only hope the species can be rescued from extinction. I believe some have now been hatched in captivity as part of these programs
NR once again no expert I use Topaz but your method works well. Great job of bird selection I for one would not have a clue you had done it that way
Awesome pose, and love the low angle. I even like the extra room you have at bottom. Great pastel colours in the BG. You could enhance what looks like a faint catchlight (at least for web presentation), and looks like the sandpiper could use an extra round of sharpening (again, for web presentation). Thanks for sharing this awesome species...too bad about its' status though :-(
You seem to have a good result for NR, but seems like lots of work. I always have a "final" version that has no NR and no sharpening on it (except for the small amount of default output sharpening during raw conversion). When I need a true final version (for whatever use that may be), I just run NR to the whole image, then paint away the NR on the subject and perch using the history brush, then sharpen the whole thing. Resize for web, then sharpen a bit more. For a print I just re-size it first then perform the NR and sharpening as above.
What a fantastic bird. The low angle, excellent pose and clean fg/bg would have made this a great pic with even a common shorebird. All that with this mega rarity makes this a winner.
Thanks for sharing this beauty
you brought a huge smile and joy to me . the addition of joy is to see that this captured in aug 11 .. may the species grow great in some undisturbed areas and then spread with large numbers :) superb image all the way as being really rare this is cracker to me.
Spoon-billed Sandpiper, Jiangsu, China
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