Merlin at the Beach IV - The Bath, Take 2

[Daniel Cadieux]

OK, the title is getting a bit pretentious...but hey, I had too much fun watching the Merlin splashing away so I'm milking the series all I can!! Although it started bathing facing me (which was awesome) it slowly rotated away until it was parallel to the camera...offereing some alternate views of the behaviour.

Canon 7D + 100-400L @400mm, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/1250s., f/7.1, ISO 400 (settings histogram checked from previous series of images), about 85% FF lenght-wise, small part of shoreline cloned out in LLC.

[dankearl]

Not sure about this one, Daniel, the usual great IQ, but the bird looks unhappy and uncomfortable.

[Tom Rambaut]

Hmm not sure. Not sure about the crop. I'll look at it again with fresh eyes tommorrow and see if I can say anything useful.

[Grace Scalzo]

This isn't sitting well with me either. Feels too squished and the space on the right isn't purposeful perhaps. Of course the action captured is superb as is your iq.

[Mital Patel]

Thats a keeper for sure in series Daniel.

[Stu Bowie]

Dan, I agree, shoot away as much as you can. You can always post some of the others at a later date, when folk may have forgotten these posts. Good behavioural shot, and the eye tells how much he's enjoying his bath. I do like the IQ of the water droplets, and your comp works well.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Daniel, I like such shots...loved the splashes and the clean view of the head...which is the real challenge. you aslo did well with the f-stop which is so important to get most droplets within DOF.

my only wish is lower angle, which am guessing was not possible.

[Tom Rambaut]

Hmm not sure. Not sure about the crop. I'll look at it again with fresh eyes tommorrow and see if I can say anything useful.

Looking again I think the fact that this the forth in the series and the preceding three were such excellent images works against this image. As expected the IQ is great and the capture of the water droplets is pretty cool. I don't get the feeling that the bird is any sort of discomfort. This does capture a behaviour that must be enjoyed by the bird. I think the previous three, as far as I can remember, had great eye contact and this does not have the same level of eye contact. Maybe when looking at a raptor image I'm conditioned to expect to have great eye contact. The gaze of a raptor and the somtimes menacing look one feels is a powerful part of a raptor image. This image just left me uncertain about my judgement. I might look at this image very differntly in the future when I have matured a bit in my own photography.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Thanks guys and gals.

Tom, thanks for articulating so well your thoughts on the image...much appreciated!