Dunlin in flight

[Davidwilliams]

Went to photograph some Sand Martins that were nesting on a sandy cliff butt didnt get any sort of a result due to the glare on the sandy soil, walking back there were a flock of Dunlin on the waters edge, nothing special but they got up and were stunning in flight, as they jinked about they changed from being difficult to see to the display captured here.

Canon MK 1v
canon 600mm
f 6.3
1/2500
iso 400

sharpened and cropped

[dankearl]

Pretty cool photo, tough to get without some merges, but it would have been great without them.
Nice getting all in focus at f6.3, and all in basically the same pose.
I would crop even more off the bottom if you can and make it a tight pano.

[Randy Stout]

David:

I am always struck how some of the rather plain looking shorebirds really are much more showy in flight, well shown here.

Good points from Dan. Not easy to get a large number of BIF in the same focal plane. You were fortunate to have only the two merges.

I like Dan's idea of a small crop from below. For me, perhaps 1/4 of the free space at bottom could be cropped to tighten up the comp.

Cheers

Randy

[Davidwilliams]

Thanks for the replies and some good suggestions, afraid I love having space around my shots and try to avoid tight crops if there is water or something else to fill the space, I feel it gives the birds some air and spatial orientation in the pics, just me I guess, but thanks once again for the most welcome c and C