April 20, 2015 During parts of the year the California coast is badly overcast. Most days it burns off by noon, but during the best light for photos, it can be dreary. This was taken on one of those days. While in the Newport Beach Back Bay attempting to shoot Ospreys in flight, this fellow landed repeatedly outside of effective camera range until he landed on this stick about 10 feet from me. He was there long enough for one shot. Fortunately the camera angle eliminated most of the bright sky that gave other shots the illusion that the Ospreys were posing in flight before a white screen. Our best guess is that this is a juvenile male nearly at full maturity. If you see the species differently, please share your insight.
Nikon D4 Nikkor 600mm ISO800 1/1250 f/6.3 RAW White Balance Auto Processed in LightroomCC, PhotoshopCC2014, NIK and TK. Slightly cropped.
Thank you for your comments. 
Comments
7 commentsPatrick, this has my vote for being one of your best. Outstanding!
Wow, very crisp image and zero noise in the brown background areas. Square crop works here.
A simply beautiful portrait Patrick
. Wonderful details and a very nice background.
Sweet One!
Excellent details and color in the hummer Patrick-terrific comp-love the background! Nice work
Sweet detail, Patrick. I kind of like just having a few feathers of the gorget catching the light right to show red. They always seem to want to pose on a perch that's perpenddicular to the camera creating that darn oof stick in the frame, but it blends into the bg pretty well in this case.
Beautiful detail Patrick
Gorgeous hummer Patrick, excellent!
