Morning Sandhills

Gallery: AvianPosted December 23, 2017201 views4 comments

Bosque del Apache NWR. This one is from the morning a few days later and there was plenty of light to get a sharp image. The problem I had with this one is that the inside of the wing in the leading bird really wanted to show the early morning light to the point of looking unreal. I tried to tone it down but I'm not sure if it worked.

7Dii, Sigma 150-600 C @ 600 mm, tripod with ballhead and Sidekick, f/8, 1/1250, iso 1600, manual exposure. Processed in LR & PS CC. Cropped to 11.5 MP. Taken at 7:18 am on December 14th.

Your comments and critiques are always appreciated.

Thanks,

Comments

4 comments

Comment posted by Bill Leggett on December 24, 2017 at 2:41 PM

Bosque a beautiful venue for bird photography, and I trust you had a good experience there, Dennis. I saw this on my tablet and wanted to view on my PC. Whatever you did to the juvenile's underwing looks pretty good to me. For composition you have chosen good framing to allow flying into space. Detail looks fair, but I think that with such a substantial crop and higher ISO you were asking a lot. This is one of those cases where lowering the contrast might be beneficial. Since the wing positions and angle on the birds is pleasing, it might be worth your while to try isolating the birds and maybe pull back on the contrast. And as a separate layer for the BG you might be able to tweak the brightness up a bit, then overall shift the color balance away from the brown tones a little.

Registered on July 21, 2004, 706 Posts, 3233 Comments

Comment posted by Jim Zablotny on December 25, 2017 at 7:18 AM

Hi Dennis,

This one looks pretty good. You could try Bill's comment about the contrast. The wings in the morning light look fine. Comp is good.........................Jim

Registered on January 17, 2004, 705 Posts, 3594 Comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on December 25, 2017 at 7:04 PM

Looks pretty good to me. What happened to the typical red head patch on the lower bird?

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by David Schoen on December 26, 2017 at 12:37 PM

Although I agree with others that there could be some minor changes made to this the general feeling of this image is quite pleasing. The light is wonderful and the composition is superb.

Registered on November 6, 2006, 1213 Posts, 4587 Comments