Early Morning Light Snow Goose Plus a Friend

[Arthur Morris]

Snow Goose with Sandhill Crane legs in early morning light, Bosque del Apache NWR, San Antonio, NM

Canon 800mm f/5.6L IS lens with the 1.4X III TC and the EOS-1D Mark IV. ISO 800. Evaluative metering +2/3 stop: 1/640 sec. at f/8 in Av mode. I saw this somewhat isolated bird close to the path from vehicle and managed two frame before it took flight.

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

[dankearl]

That nice Bosque light!
Very Nice goose, I like the bill color and the water drops on the body.

[Doug Brown]

I'm going to be honest here. This frame just isn't doing it for me. Yes the light is nice, and the subject is sharp. But I would have wanted the goose to be looking right at us instead of slightly off to the side. And the crane legs distract without really adding anything to the image.

[gail bisson]

I am with Doug on this one re:crane legs. I do like the light and to my eye, the goose is looking straight at me.
Gail

[Ofer Levy]

I have to agree with Doug - this is not up to your usual high standards. Composition, head angle, and even exposure are not great. Going manual in here instead of AV would have been the way to go as whites are nearly cooked in a few areas.

[Arthur Morris]

I have to agree with Doug - this is not up to your usual high standards. Composition, head angle, and even exposure are not great. Going manual in here instead of AV would have been the way to go as whites are nearly cooked in a few areas.

There are no WHITE values over 230. As I have tried to convey to you repeatedly (and obviously failed), the right exposure is the right exposure no matter the mode that you are in. The exposure here is perfect.

[Arthur Morris]

I'm going to be honest here. This frame just isn't doing it for me. Yes the light is nice, and the subject is sharp. But I would have wanted the goose to be looking right at us instead of slightly off to the side. And the crane legs distract without really adding anything to the image.

To be honest, this frame excites me; I was thrilled when I saw it on the laptop. I would have preferred it if the bird had been looking 1 1/2 degrees more to its left so that it was looking right at me. The image is razor sharp, the exposure is perfect, and the light is as spectacular as direct frontal lighting gets. For me, the crane legs show that the two species hang out together. Being out of focus they offer just a hint of that and are ideally placed to balance the composition. But you gotta ask, "What do I know?"

[Doug Brown]

Going manual in here instead of AV would have been the way to go as whites are nearly cooked in a few areas.

While I am a proponent of manual exposure for flight photography, I don't think that exposure mode makes any difference in situations like this...as long as you have the correct exposure. Correct is correct, regardless of whether you got there with manual, Av, or Tv.

[Dan Busby]

I love everything about this photo except the crane legs. If there was no descriptive dialogue I would not have even known those were crane legs and I think the photo needs to stand on its own, without a description of what is present. But for me, the exposure is perfect, the colours are fantastic and I don't need the HA to be any different. As for the manual vs AV issue, I agree with Doug and Artie - the correct exposure is the correct one and it doesn't matter how you get there. Agreed, however, there are situations where you are more likely to get the correct exposure using manual.

[Arthur Morris]

I love everything about this photo except the crane legs. If there was no descriptive dialogue I would not have even known those were crane legs and I think the photo needs to stand on its own, without a description of what is present. But for me, the exposure is perfect, the colours are fantastic and I don't need the HA to be any different. As for the manual vs AV issue, I agree with Doug and Artie - the correct exposure is the correct one and it doesn't matter how you get there. Agreed, however, there are situations where you are more likely to get the correct exposure using manual.

It would not have been too difficult to eliminate the crane's legs (and the crane reflections) but again, I like the effect and the story that it tells. Dan, there are no situations where you are more likely to get the correct exposure using Manual mode. In rare instances there are times when you cannot dial in enough plus or minus (usually minus) compensation to stay in an automatic mode (and need to switch to Manual mode. If anyone knows of the situations I am talking about I would love to hear from them. While it may seem as if I am splitting semantic hairs it is important for folks (including Mr. Ofer) to understand that being in Manual mode does not, can not, and will never "help you get the right exposure." Only your brain can do that.

Respectfully.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: I forgot to mention that I am fine if every other person in the world hate's the inclusion of the cranes legs in this image and wanted to thank them for sharing their thoughts.

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

Artie, with the head on angle, I think this would have worked better vertical without the crane. Love the colors and the light. Was red channel hot in RAW? I frequently strugle with that with white birds in light that is so warm. When I protect the red channel, the image overall goes quite dark...and fixing it in post introduces a lot of noise in my 40D files.

[Arthur Morris]

Artie, with the head on angle, I think this would have worked better vertical without the crane. Love the colors and the light. Was red channel hot in RAW? I frequently strugle with that with white birds in light that is so warm. When I protect the red channel, the image overall goes quite dark...and fixing it in post introduces a lot of noise in my 40D files.

The RED channel was not hot in the RAW as you can see in the BreezeBrowser screen capture. In fact, I needed to add +.25 to the Exposure. The light here was much more YELLOW than RED. I am loving the White Neutralizer filter in NIK's Color Efex to tone down the yellow in images like this.

[Arthur Morris]

Looking back at the original post I wish that I had left a bit more YELLOW in the master file .

[Robert Holguin]

Wonderful image. I really love the light, great pose, nice detail, and great water color. Very nice shot.
Well done.