Meet an Osprey

Gallery: AvianPosted January 22, 2012140 views5 comments

San Joaquin Wildlife Preserve 1/22/12
A male and female Osprey were on a nesting platform building a nest. Periodically the male took off and brought back a stick. On this flight he flew right at me over my head. I got dozens of great shots of the two of them, individually and finally at the parking lot one of them was eating a fish on top of the telephone pole. More postings to come. It was very overcast, hence the high ISO, slow shutter speed and low f/stop. Many shots had blurred wings.

Nikon D300 Nikon 200-400 taken at 330 mm ISO-1000 1/640 f/5.6
manual exposure hand held 29.9 meters distance cropped to 2/3 CS5

Comments and feedback welcome

Comments

5 comments

Comment posted by Ron Bielefeld on January 22, 2012 at 6:40 PM

Patrick, Iike the position of the bird and the almost head on view. In the larger version the bird is a bit soft. Also, the cloning work you did to the BG is very obvious and detracts from the image greatly for me.

Registered on December 6, 2008, 360 Posts, 7132 Comments

Comment posted by Patrick O'Healy on January 22, 2012 at 8:09 PM

Ron,
Thank you for the feedback. While the marks did not show on my computer screen, they did show on my IPad. time for new screens. This one is cleaned up, but no guarantees.

Registered on March 13, 2011, 326 Posts, 1679 Comments

Comment posted by Richard Ditch on January 22, 2012 at 8:30 PM

I agree with Ron.

Registered on November 1, 2003, 1031 Posts, 12705 Comments

Comment posted by John Blumenkamp on January 22, 2012 at 10:14 PM

I love the wing position too, and also agree about the cloning. Looks like you addressed it in your repost. It might be worth trying to lighten-up the dark areas when converting the raw file. Hope to see more - sounds like you had a great time with these guys!

Registered on February 26, 2011, 58 Posts, 313 Comments

Comment posted by David Haynes on January 22, 2012 at 10:52 PM

Patrick,
Good head on angle. You might consider using the highlights and shadows tool to lighten the dark areas of the bird. Just a suggestion. I shot today as well and the light was terrible with rain tomorrow. The re-post is significantly better. Hope to shoot with you, Harry, and Eric soon. I think they are back from New Mexico. See ya Patrick.

Registered on February 20, 2010, 110 Posts, 1511 Comments