Greater Yellowlegs

[Nancy Bell]

Photographed in central Oregon, August, 2011. I imported the eye from another image taken at the same time. The original eye was half closed.

Canon 1D Mark IV, Canon 400 DO f4 + 1.4x, 1/640, f10, exp. comp. +2/3, ISO 400

C & C most appreciated.

[arash_hazeghi]

I like the calling pose and light, I wish the angle was lower and the IQ has suffered a bit

[Paul Lagasi]

The pose and open open mouth, the tongue is cool. I agree about IQ could be a large crop...Nice work though Nancy

[allanrube]

+1 on calling pose. Not the usual yellow legs shot.

[Mital Patel]

Nancy,

Happy that you got this pose indeed a good calling pose here.
As you have already captured it i may try boosting up mid's and give a bit more sharpness.

Reducing the background blue might not hurt though.

Better luck next time for more lower angle to reduce the power of water effects..

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

What a funny looking tongue. I really like the diagonal reflective lines in the water with great colors.

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you all for the advice. I reduced the crop to 50%, decreased the saturation of the blues in the water, adjusted the mid-range with curves and did another round of sharpening. I am having trouble getting consistent sharp results with this set-up and have tried the usual fixes. I'm perplexed with this issue.

[Daniel Cadieux]

The repost looks alot better, although I wouldn't mind seeing less room below and more above. Great calling pose, and I like the texture of the water. Great job with the eye transplant.

Are your raw files consistant, or is it on the post-processing side of things you are having difficulty?

[Mital Patel]

Nancy

Re-post looks much much better.

here's a try open Levels and give a try RGB : 0, 1.13, 243
Go check how it looks for you.

[Raul Padilla]

i like more the second post, the tongue is great, amazing pose

[arash_hazeghi]

Your settings are not optimal for getting good sharpness, your aperture (f/10) is way too small (from the 50% crop you were not that close to the bird so there is no limitation from DOF) and your shutter speed is slow given the FL. the optimal setting for this shot us f/7.1 at 1/1600sec or something like that.

[Jeff Nicol]

I like the re-post much better myself. I think I would actually like to see the original image with the half closed eye. It would show how much effort the bird is putting into letting out the call.