Post your best bird shots!

[Joel Eade]

I love the loon photo and I'm not sure that the bright white breast is a distraction or problem. But I think that an effective way to avoid it would be to use in-camera exposure compensation when shooting. The same trick applies when taking photos of bald eagles -- if you want detail in the white feathers, dropping the exposure works great. Here's one I did at -1 stop:

Agreed....beautiful Eagle shot too!

[Kayaker72]

Agreed....beautiful Eagle shot too!

+1...and a great example of exposing for detail in the whites. I've tried doing this with egrets, but I have to admit, my "norm" when shooting is to be 2/3 to 1 stop overexposed according to the in camera meter. This tendency of mine probably resulted in the uber white breast on the loon. This particular shot happened too quickly for me to think about my settings, but I was shooting in M mode and the settings were probably set to be a slight overexposure. Thanks for the feedback and thoughts....