Beach Bird

[SMcG]

I spent last weekend at my sister-in-law’s beach house down in Surfside and as you might imagine it turned out to be a great place for wildlife photography. I also learned, hopefully, an important lesson about my camera. I tried working on staying low which wasn’t too tough from my oversized towel. What I failed to notice was that I had somehow changed the exposure compensation on my camera so that a bunch of my photos were underexposed by a stop. What really was difficult to accept was that some of them were my favorite shots from the weekend. There was this one bird that hung around for about 10 minutes that I think made the most interesting subject that I encountered and this bird really gave me a challenge in keeping it in the picture as it splashed around in the water chasing fish. The whole scene was quite comical.

I have been experimenting with framing and at the moment really like a long, narrow frame and would like feedback on the way I cropped this image as well as any other suggestions on how to make it better.

I accidently forgot to click the critiques welcome box so please don't hold back if you have anything to suggest.

TIA,

-S

[auddii]

You can change the CC box by going to edit and then click go advanced, then you can change the drop down menu.

As for the photo, this is awesome! Tack sharp, and great "pose". Beautiful shot!

[SMcG]

Audry,

Thanks so much for the help with the edit feature, hopefully I will get it all down soon. Also thanks for your kind words about the picture, I think it was my best one from the weekend and was really excited about it. Most of my photos were just of birds standing around and were for lack of a better word, boring.

-S

[Shadow]

Are you shooting RAW? One stop should be easy to fix in post, if so. Nice shot!

[Patti Edens]

That is a fantastic shot. You got a perfect depth of field with the focus in exactly the right spot! You also got an excellent behavior shot. Those Reddish Egrets dash around and hold their wings up like that to block out glare so they can see the fish just under the surface. I love to watch them.

[lhdvies]

Nice capture Sandra!!

[rjsalinas]

nicely captured, Sandra

[TxPhotoShooter]

Well done Sandra!

[blue-october-fan]

I love the beads of water dropping off his beak :) really cool shot!

[SMcG]

Yes I am shooting in raw and was able to correct the exposure at home but there is still more noise in the shadows than there would have been if I had just gotten the exposure correct in the first place. I should have been paying more attention in the first place but in the excitement of this bird running around I didn’t notice what I had done.


The water coming from the beak really did add a lot to the picture for me. That was one of the reasons that I picked this one over several of the other similar shots.

Thanks for the encouragement!

-S

[SMcG]

Here is another one of my favorites from last weekend. It was one of the more interesting bird I encountered. Most of what I saw were seagulls but this one seemed to have a bit more personality. It was running around on the sand occasionally pecking and then running then pecking. It got so preoccupied with this activity that it got quite close to me though I never was able to see exactly what it was pecking at. I think the shape of this bird is a little peculiar and the markings are pretty interesting to look at. Again in this one I tried using a long narrow frame which I think made the photo more interesting.

-S

[houtex01]

Great job on both of these Sandra...nice focus with details and very nice DOF...what lens was you using?...see that you just recently joined the forum so welcome aboard...looking forward to more of your photography work...

Ron

[ifly223]

Thats what I look like tippy toeing throught the surf. Very sharp image. : )

[corralup]

From one Sandra to another, you did wonderful I think. Welcome!