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There is little of the frame for the birds to run into but I think the water trail is important. Your thoughts?
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Image Description
Photo taken just before sunset but the reservoir was completely shaded by a hill.
Technical Details
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Great job in catching this behavior, Kent. I would agree with your cropping decision, the water action is key to showing this behavior. It’s not so much about where they’re going but where they came from. An iconic, bucket list shot I hope to get one day. Well done.
Kent: A terrific capture of the action and your lateral placement of the grebes in the frame works great. My only suggestion would be to crop from the bottom or raise the camera angle a touch to get the birds lower in the frame. The equidistant vertical placement makes the top of the frame look tight to me. That’s a pretty small nit for a marvelous capture. >=))>
Allen: I am fortunate to live a reservoir that provides food and cover for them as they do not frequent any other reservoirs in the bay area. I was lucky that this pair went across in front of me. So often their movement is away from the shoreline.
Nice job on this image, Kent. The way you framed it works well for this behavior and angle to the camera. I could certainly see a crop from the bottom as there’s probably more empty space there than needed.
Bill: Above them is a muddy shoreline; a distraction. So I cropped close to their heads and included their reflection as I thought it contributed more.
Great catch of this behavior Kent. Terrific angle of view. Nice crop to show the water splashing behind but maybe a small crop from the bottom. Love seeing those red eyes too.
Hi Kent. I was looking at this image again, and I’m seeing quite a bit of noise in the water. If you haven’t tried it already, I’d suggest taking a look at DxO PureRaw. It seems to do a superb job of reducing noise without destroying fine detail. Living in the Pacific Northwest, where my usual iso is 2000+, I use it on almost all my images. Like most software, there’s a free trial and it’s not subscription based.
I used Lightroom’s denoise. The photo was shot at 12000 ISO due to my desire to use f 14 to increase the depth of field. It’s a challenge to get both birds sharp when they are side by side. I denoised it enough for the birds to remain sharp…. Too much and they get glossy with the Lightroom denoise.
