A Dunlin (Calidres Alpina) catches a crab during low tide on Bolivar Island, Texas, USA.
[Apr. 30th, 2017 10:16:55 PM]
I went to Bolivar Flats just outside of Galveston Texas specifically to shoot for this challenge. I was lucky enough to have sunrise and low tide correspond during the challenge. Well, sunrise was a bust due to cloud cover so didn't get the amazing light with bird in the shallows catching something interesting photograph I was after.
I laid out there for close to 4 hours photographing birds and got some great shots of a Reddish Egret and some even better ones of a Reddish Egret with a White Morph. Unfortunately those photographs just didn't express the really low perspective I was after, even if they were shot from the same height as this one (which is about 4 inches off the sand). This bird was just super close, which gives this really low perspective to the photograph.
Thanks everyone for the comments. I am really happy with the outcome and it's great to be on the front page.
For those unfamiliar with my camera, it has a 2x crop. So this shot was at 1000mm of effective reach. The Sigma 50-500 in the Olympus 4/3's mount is a rare lens and when I found it for a really low price I picked it up to play around with it. So far I have been really happy with the lens, just needs good light to use because it needs stopped down to f8.0 to reach it's sharpest point. There are only a few photos here taken with this lens, but it still feels good to have taken the highest vote spot with this photograph.
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Place: 5 out of 60 Avg (all users): 6.4583 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.2941 Avg (non-participants): 6.8571 Views since voting: 1422 Views during voting: 91 Votes: 48 Comments: 10 Favorites: 0
Greetings from the Critique Club! I would defintitely say this more than meets the challenge, as wildlife give you very little leeway to get good pics of them. It's minimalistic and as *found* as can get.
Having read your photog's comments, Ronnie, I am even more impressed by this shot - I've also been out at ridiculous hours shooting waterfowl during the wee hours of the morning. Wonderful capture and considering you had to shoot at f8 to optimize this lens, and you got this at only 1/500, helluva good job! Keep that lens handy in the future :-) The low backlight is beautiful, tons of detail on the bird and I never knew til now that there was indeed a crab in the shot. Again incredible detail. And knowing how hard it is to get a shot of wildlife, let alone cooperative wildlife...double kudos to you.
Nitpicks? Hard to find any except maybe clone out that dot of white in the surf and pop the low highlight in the eye, which would probably make it look a tad artificial....nah, just continue doing what you're doing. Looking forward to more entries from you!
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