Wison's Phalarope Pair

Gallery: AvianPosted February 5, 2013161 views8 comments

A photo from my last day in Malheur NWR last spring. I found a nice group of phalaropes foraging near the edge of this pond and decided to hang with them hoping to capture some behavior photos, but unfortunately all they did was forage together. They were in constant motion so I kept my shutter speed up to stop the action.

Canon MkIV, 600mm & 1.4x, ISO 640, 1/2000, f10, manual spot meter, nearly full frame horizontal, vertical pano crop

Comments

8 comments

Comment posted by Philip Hodgkins on February 5, 2013 at 6:58 PM

Beautiful birds, well posed. A shame the nearer bird is soft, but it is totally difficult to get two in focus.

Registered on July 24, 2006, 2741 Posts, 12349 Comments

Comment posted by Keith Bauer on February 5, 2013 at 8:46 PM

Ken: The bird on the left is great. Without enough DOF to pull off the bird on the right, for me the image just doesn't hold together.

Registered on November 20, 2003, 458 Posts, 4836 Comments

Comment posted by Dennis Plank on February 5, 2013 at 10:56 PM

Beautiful job on the main subject, Ken. My eye tends to get drawn to the oof female. I don't know if it's feasible to eliminate her, but for my taste she doesn't add to the image.

Registered on January 28, 2008, 1767 Posts, 23192 Comments

Comment posted by Craig Strand on February 6, 2013 at 2:49 AM

Lovely colors and detail on the male Ken, nice to see the pair framed together.

Registered on March 30, 2008, 416 Posts, 2885 Comments

Comment posted by May Haga on February 6, 2013 at 9:12 AM

Wonderful to get both male and female together. Nice low angle.
May

Registered on February 22, 2007, 714 Posts, 8470 Comments

Comment posted by Rick Andrews on February 7, 2013 at 12:38 PM

I love the colour and detail in the male. But unless the lens / t.c. compressed this shot I'm a bit surprised by the seeminlgy narrow dof. I guess I would have expected that would happen with an exposure of f/4 or f/5.6 but not f/10. Still nice catch light in the eyes and great POV.

cheers
Rick

Registered on December 31, 2011, 45 Posts, 222 Comments

Comment posted by Nate Chappell on February 7, 2013 at 8:04 PM

The male looks great here Ken, I think you needed about F22 to get the female in focus.

Registered on February 1, 2006, 1158 Posts, 19528 Comments

Comment posted by Howard Cheek on April 18, 2013 at 9:02 AM

Nicely composed, techs look great Ken.
Your soft focused female doesn't bother me particularly..
The better looking male's in sharp focus, and that's what counts right

Registered on July 24, 2008, 1201 Posts, 10758 Comments