Oystercatchers Displaying

[Michael Hogan]

Canon 40D, 500 f4, 1.4 converter, 1/1250 @f5.6, ISO 200, AP and Pattern metering. Cropped (30%) and sharpened in LR3.

You often hear Oystercatchers displaying or giving out but normally don't get a good chance to photograph it. They were not very cooperative, one always in front of the other but that's life.

Thanks

Michael

[Joel Eade]

Michael,

I like the framing you chose on this one, very nice. The overlapping birds almost look like one bird with 2 heads and 4 legs....optical illusion almost.

Joel

[Ronald Zigler]

Neat bird. I have read about them recently and would like to get any photo of one. Your challenge Michael reminds me of a response from a wedding photographer friend of mine when I told him I wanted to photograph birds. His response: "Oh, that's more difficult than photographing children" (notoriously uncooperative).

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Michael,

This is the same kit I had and a good one at for sure. The subject placement weakens the picture for me. My eye is stuck in the foreground looking at the brown ground and not at your subjects. Lots of negative space on top as well. Always frame the image for flow, balance and harmony when possibly. Remember the rule of thirds as well I might move subjects more out of the center.

This is a nice moment in nature and the AOC is a beautiful species, consider taking some off the bottom and top. Thanks for sharing, capturing the couple is nice more separation would be stronger. Do you have other pictures of the two, thanks for posting.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Michael, I really like the exposure and color. I don't mind the framing so much but the juxtaposition of the two birds weakens the image IMO. The distance compression that you get with a super-telephoto lens makes them look even closer together. These birds do have an odd way of displaying, and you did capture that element quite nicely. Hope you get more chances to capture them when separated a bit.

[John Davenport]

Very nice...
John....