Sort of posting this for fun but maybe someone else has tried for a photo like this and
can share what they would have done.
I think it might be doable in the right conditions.
This was taken at night with a Full moon on a nesting platform in Baja.
I thought I just might could pull off something that worked.
This is pretty rough,
Osprey in Moonlight
D610, 200mm, f2.8, iso6400, 1/160, Handheld
That’s a tough one with the moon shining right at you, Dan. I haven’t had much experience with this kind of image, but I think going for a straight silhouette might have been a better option than trying to bring out any detail in the nest and bird.
On a side note, I remember an image Sandy posted years ago and her with a bird and the moon. She took two adjacent frames, one focused on the bird and the other on the moon. I don’t recall at this time what she did about the exposure, but you might have tried something like that. That would let you get the exposure you wanted on the nest, bird and moon independently.
By the way, this is still a cool shot.
This is certainly a neat shot and kudos for seeing the opportunity and getting the shot. I wonder if the bird and nest would seem this bright being back lit by the moon? I like Dennis’s idea of a silhouette. Black and White might be something to try. There’s a lot of negative space and I wonder if a circular crop might work on this type of image. But, yes, a very cool image and we’re all envious.
Certainly a neat image! I do believe that if you could have gotten the birds head looing straight ahead it would be a more impressive image. Still, a very good photograph, and I applaud your getting it. Thanks for sharing.
Dan: I like the out of the box approach to these difficult conditions. I think that the scene is too dark to try and bring up color and details, so an alternate approach would be to create silhouettes with a conversion to BW. Richard
