Bird at Sunset (one of my fav pics so far)

[Silverpenguin]

I went out today to a place called Esher and stopped off for some tea and cake (yum) at a garden centre type place on the way home. On the way back to the car I noticed the sun was just starting to creep through the clouds across the field opposite the car. Amazingly it was doing so right between a gap of trees and some farm buildings allowing me to frame it in the middle of the shot. I fired off about 35 pictures in all. Some of the sun not visible yet and then of it in various stages of visibility until the final few shots showed it in its entirity. All the while I was shooting I was hoping for a bird to fly across its path and only 3 obliged. One was too far away and looked like a spec and the other was too near me and so out of focus but this one shot gave me the look I wanted!

I also love the way you can just make out the outline of the sun here. I would have prefered if it was more obvious as it is in some of the other shots I took but I think the bird makes up for it and I love the colour/texture in the sky!

I have cropped maybe %15 out of the image to make the bird more apparant on this low res shot. Its not perfect, you can see the trees off to the side but to crop them out would mean losing that fantastic colour and pattern of the cloud down the bottom. Part of me thinks the trees might even help frame the bottom of the picture?!

I know its mine so I have to say this but...I really like this picture and despite a few small niggles its become one of my favourites and so I thought I'd share it with you all!

Nikon D200
Sigma 100-300 EX at 300mm
1/1250 at F8, ISO 200

 

[WildBill]

Looks like a post card.
Nice Job!


Bill

 

[Polygon]

Wow, that's a really nice one. Did you do any postprocessing besides cropping and framing? It looks so unreal (in a positive meaning). My first thought was "nice painting" but then I realized I was in TPF . That's another picture I could imagine printed big, framed and on my wall ;-).
Great shot, thanks for sharing

 

[Silverpenguin]

Thanks for the comments

I shot with a little underexposure to get a little more contrast and then I opened in Nikon Caprture, adjusted the brightness and contrast by a couple of points, so barely at all.

Photoshop was just used for cropping and resizing so all in all what you see here is only very very slightly adjusted from the priginal capture

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

sweet shot, great colours and comp!

 

[photo gal]

Beautiful shot : )

 

[Raymond J Barlow]

oppps please delete this Mods!!

 

[scoob]

awesome shot :thumbup:

 

[LaFoto]

If this were mine, I'd love it too!!!! :thumbsup:

 

[Silverpenguin]

Thanks for all the comments everyone

 

[Canoncan]

I really like it.

 

[ClarkKent]

Nicely Done!