Sunset Crane

[mjs1973]

Took a quick trip to a staging area for sandhill cranes migrating south for the winter. The weather/light sucked but it was still great to see all of the cranes.

[Grandpaw]

Took a quick trip to a staging area for sandhill cranes migrating south for the winter. The weather/light sucked but it was still great to see all of the cranes.

That is probably a once in a lifetime shot!! Way to go.

[Photo-John]

Well, damn. That is a pretty awesome composition. Nice work!

[f86sabjf]

absolutely awaesome . once in a lifetime is right indeed

[mjs1973]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

In full disclosure, this image is not straight out of the camera. This is a composite of two separate images. This is the image I had hoped to capture, but knew that the sunset wouldn't stay like this for long, so I took a photo of the sun while it was still bright enough to be seen. It quickly started to fade away. I was able to get a photo of a crane flying directly in front of the sun, but by that time it was barely visible, and the cranes were too far away to really stand out. The crane in this image was taken from a separate photo.

Thanks for the feature!

[emiles]

Shhhhhhh, they may take it down now! Congrats on the feature, still a gorgeous shot.

[Photo-John]

Awwww - I have to admit, I'm disappointed to find out that this is a composite. I'm not going to remove it as a feature but in the future please let us know if a photo is a composite when you post it. This is an important photography ethics issue. And I think that nature and wildlife photography is one are where this is especially important. Compositing essentially makes this something other than photography.