This is a very basic shot - for now I am just happy with the exposure and sharp focus in the eye. I find coots fascinating to observe - I spent hundreds of hours watching our local coot families last year - and hard to photograph because of the contrast between the white head-shield and bill and black plumage. I hope to be able to get some interesting and technically sound action shots this year. Let’s see… for now any critique and suggestion is welcome. Thank you!
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Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D750
Nikon 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6
f/7.1 @400mm ISO500 1/250 handheld
Coots are definitely interesting birds. As you note, your exposure is spot-on here. And focus looks good. My only suggestions are to try and get lower and to work on your post-processing skills. I took your photo into Photoshop and resized to 1600 px on the long end, sharpened the bird, reduced noise on the BG, and set white and black points on the bird with a curves layer. See what you think.
Yep, exposure is hard on this bird, but you did a very good job on that ! Next time, if circumstances allow, you may try for a lower point of view, but of course, that’s not always possible. Cheers, Hans
Nice job on the exposure and focus, Esme. I think Lyle’s reprocessed image pops slightly better, so you might want to take a look at what he did. I agree with trying to get a lower point of view, but I photograph lots of places where it’s not possible, so I certainly understand. One trick that sometimes helps is to zoom out a bit for a looser composition and put the bird higher in the frame . It provides an illusion of reducing the angle. You can do the opposite shooting upward.
@Lyle_Gruby many thanks for the taking the time of re-processing my picture and sharing useful hints. I like the changes you made and will experiment along those lines with my future coots. As for the position, also noticed by @Hans_Overduin and @Dennis_Plank, I just could not go lower: I was as low a I could on a bridge. But next time I will try for sure the zoom-out trick! Thanks to all.
Very nice image Esme. Lyle’s repost does make a nice change and good suggestions about trying to get to eye level when you can. I would also suggest that you try to keep your ss a bit higher. Looking at the settings you could have offset a higher ss with a higher ISO and/or a larger aperture size. Higher ss help get those tack sharp photos especially when birds are close to us.
