The Story Behind the Photo: Common Moorhen High Stepping

High Stepping Common Moorhen Photo Story

I love this guy’s feet. They are huge in comparison to his body. They almost look as though they’ve been exaggerated in Photoshop. The Common Moorhen has chicken like feet instead of webbed feet giving the bird the nickname of Chicken-foot Coot.

This photo was taken in the Dominican Republic. It was about 10 in the morning on a sunny day. The light was bright enabling me to freeze the Common Moorhen’s “High Stepping” walk. The sun was fairly high in the sky giving some shadows on the bird and grass.

High Stepping Common Moorhen Photo Details

Camera: Olympus OM-D E-M1
Lens: Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm f/4.0-5.6
Focal Length: 197mm
ISO: 400
Aperture: f/7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/1250 of a second
Exposure Compensation: 0
Lighting: Clear, sunny morning

Bird Post Processing

Cropped the photograph in Lightroom 5.
Cleaned up the grass using Content Aware Fill in Photoshop CC.
Used Google Viveza 2 to additionally lighten and darken portions of the photo.
Used Topaz Denoise and a Layer Mask in Photoshop CC to selectively remove the noise from the photo.
Selectively sharpened the image using the Unsharp filter and a layer mask in Photoshop CC.

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