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| Group |
Round |
C/R |
Comment |
Date |
Image |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Now that's a stalking pose if ever I saw one. Amazing experience and a beautiful image to remember it by. |
Mar 18th |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Reply |
Cropping does help. I opened the shadows a bit on the birds, and reduced highlights on the background. I tried reducing clarity on the background but it didn't really help. Thanks for yor inputs. |
Mar 18th |
 |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Larry, sounds like an exhilarating experience to be so close to the Bobcat! I've seen them in the wild a couple of times and gotten shots once, from a distance. Full body, but in the thick of a patch of weeds..
Although I typically do full-body shots of wildlife, as you said there are exceptions. The story of the stealthy predator being hidden in their environment is definitely one.
I like Butch's slightly darkened background which does make the rimlight pop a bit more. |
Mar 18th |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi Ann, fancy meeting you here :) Welcome to the group!
You caught a nice moment of the action with great positions of the 2 birds. Your work in the post to bring out details paid off. I might like to see the birds a little bit brighter/ whiter- but that's a fine line with keeping detail.
Auto-ISO might not have helped in this situation unless you also had exposure compensation set for the white birds. Like Larry, I take test shots if I'm expecting to shoot a white subject- harder to do when it's a surprise.
|
Mar 18th |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Bud, one of the most unusual, different Spoonbill images I've seen, I love it! Doing something different like this is one way to generate impact, and it worked here for sure.
I do like the slightly darkened background, but I also like this as you've presented it.
Very pretty image. I'm going to take more notice of poses like this on the big waders now! |
Mar 18th |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi David,
I like the line of birds and noticed right away the different wing positions of the 2 outer birds. The overall line has a nice gentle curve to it which I like. Flipping it so they're flying to the right was even more interesting to me.
1/2000 is generally good for slower flapping birds like geese, and they seem to be reasonably sharp at f/9. So that is good. I think overall the image is under-exposed and just increased exposure by about 2 stops and let the sky go white (but then I like High Key).
The detractor to me is that the sky looks like it has had a very strong, large vignette applied- it's bright in the center and dark at the edges. It doesn't add anything for me.
|
Mar 18th |
 |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi Gregg,
I really like this tight shot. There are good lines and shapes- triangles specifically- that make a good composition. Filling the frame with the important part of the action was a nice choice, and minimizes some of the gore. Maybe for Nature competitions you'd need more of the scene, but I think for an open category that wouldn't be a consideration.
As for the sharpness, honestly I didn't notice it immediately. I put the image through Topaz sharpen- just a really small amount made a big difference. Maybe check your output settings to see if some sharpening is being applied?
The biggest detractor for me is that the color overall feels much too vivid. The warm gold and cool turqouise on the left compete for my attention. So I desaturated the overall color quite a bit, which to me seems more natural. Of course that may be one of the things you like about it- that can very much be a matter of taste. |
Mar 18th |
 |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Reply |
Dave, this chick is probably too big for the Skua to try to take, unless it was already compromised in some way. I believe it was trying to get it to cough up the meal it'd just eaten. |
Mar 6th |
| 67 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
I forgot to mention the location, this was at Cape Bird in the Ross Sea, Antarctica. |
Mar 2nd |
7 comments - 2 replies for Group 67
|
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Reply |
Yes that kind of pattern does give you a much better chance at getting them- either penguins or dolphins! Sometimes the water is clear enough that you can see them just under the surface as they come up, that helps too. |
Mar 31st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Reply |
OK that makes sense. |
Mar 31st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Reply |
Wow this one is even more impactful! Love that fanned out tail. |
Mar 24th |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
A very appealing image, I can see why it is a favorite notecard. As Maria noted, the triangle of the branches add a lot. I like the fact that the bill fits perfectly at the apex of that triangle! There's also nice feather detail, which can sometimes be a challenging in soft light like ths. Very sweet. |
Mar 21st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi Adrian,
As you well know, photographing anything that randomly pops up out of the ocean is one of the most challenging things you can do! How nice that 2 of them popped up at the same time and so nicely juxtaposed with each other. The splashes add to the action, as do the open beaks. Well done.
|
Mar 21st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi Jerry,
Interesting musings on the lessons from this shot. There are surely times the shot "just isn't there" for whatever reason. Whether I try a shot or not often depends on the uniqueness of the opportunity. Meaning, if it's a common subject I would probably skip it. But if it's rare, or I'm traveling and won't have another chance, I'll take it and see what I can do later. Although the Great Egret is a common subject for me, getting one with a frog like this is not, and I'd definitely have tried it!
I think you've done a nice job with what you had to work with. There's enough detail for it to look good from a reasonable viewing distance. The one thing I'd do with this is rotate it so that the bird's legs are vertical. I'm not sure if this was on a hillside, but the background vegetation does also look crooked. That said, I think it works either way, just a bit of a different feeling to it. |
Mar 21st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
Hi Bruce,
Oh this is a lovely behavior image! Catching the peak pose of the display and all the detail of the feathers is great.
I love the environment you've included- such an important part of the story. The background bush adds a very nice compositional element, offsetting the bird well. Having the whole shape of that bush is important for that to work. And how lucky that the fanned tail fits perfectly against the snow and doesn't intersect with that bush at all.
I'm partial to "animal in its environment" images and this one hits all the right marks for me. |
Mar 21st |
| 91 |
Mar 26 |
Comment |
This really pops with the red feathers against the gray water. Your processing to lighten up the head worked perfectly. Such good detail and crispness. I love the patterns in the water as a background, too. Yes a lower perspective might be nice, but then it might've been a very different background, too.
The family name for this is Merganser, but I'm not sure of the species.
As for the shutter speed / ISO tradeoff- yeah that is a constant experiment for me. It's a lot harder to recover softness due to motion blur than noise, these days. But with today's IS technology I'm getting sharp shots with very slow shutters when subjects are relatively still. And I agree with you about losing detail when the ISO gets too high, that's my experience with birds particularly (maybe not so much other subjects with less fine detail). When I have a subject that sticks around long enough, I'll take some shots at high iso, and then reduce shutter speed/ iso and take some more so that I have a choice later.
Anyway this is a very attractive image, well done. |
Mar 21st |
5 comments - 3 replies for Group 91
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12 comments - 5 replies Total
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