Masked Lapwing

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

SSR_2875 copy 5XNB.jpeg
SSR_2875 copy 5XNB.jpeg2024Ă—1452 882 KB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Australia
A bunch of three cool birds were running along Rainbow Beach outside Queensland.
This was a very tough catch - they run faster than I can, and trying to get far enough ahead of them, then fling myself in the sand before they got there was nearly impossible. I finally had Jim get WAY ahead of them and gently herd them back to me. This was a few years ago when I was much more nimble.

Specific Feedback

comments and suggestions always welcome

Technical Details

D850
500 mm
F4
1/2500
ISO 2000
Manual
Spot metering

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1 Like
2

What a lovely fellow. I appreciate the simplicity in this photo and the direct focus on the bird. The birds colors are quite interesting, almost as though she’s wearing a yellow mask. The birds prance is a lovely touch

3

Sandy,

I really like the background here. It kind of glows. It sets off the bird with really nice contrast. Too bad the head turn wasn’t in your direction. But that’s only a small nit. The contrast between the bird and the background is what really makes the picture work for me.

4

I love the sparse setting for this interesting looking strutter. Were you laying in the sand for this? Toooo cool.

5

Very well done, Sandy. The low angle works well and catching it with both feet off the ground really makes the image special.

6

Great image Sandy! They are colloquially called plovers or spur-winged plovers here. They are quite common and always seen in pairs or small groups. Both sexes have “spurs” at the elbow. They are extremely protective of their young and will not hesitate in attacking intruders. If they have young one of the parent birds will put on the broken leg act to draw attention away from the babies.

The background works a treat with its softness and gentle colours bringing all the focus onto the bird. The low angle also works very nicely.

7

A very pleasing comp and my only nit is that a lot of feather detail is gone from the amount of noise suppression that was used. You may want to re-process this one with less noise suppression and try to recover some of the feather detail with micro-contrast enhancement. Still a very fine image with an excellent comp, BG, and Action…Jim