Courtship Flight Northern Paintail

[Chris Knight]

Looking for Feedback on this file looking to enter it in a competition Taken about an hour after sunrise Trying to capture the courtship flight behavior of this breed
Nikon D3 200mm f2 w 2x TC 400mm f4 @ f5 1/2000s ISO 800 Proceesed with Capture NX2 40% crop high pass sharpening and slight noise reduction

[Loi Nguyen]

Wow, this is stunning. I love the colors and details of both th subjct and the background. The only thing I would sugget is if you ould add just a wee bit of space at the top and bottom.

[PhilCook]

Eye popping color all through this, the early morning light has done wonders, quite a painterly look to it all, in a perfect world I wish the head/bill of the foremost duck was separate from the ducks body in front { but that's asking an awful lot } One dark spot top right could be removed, not sure what it is actually

[Jonathan Ashton]

Its a fine capture, great piece of action, super poses and I like the multicoloured background..
I think there are a couple of processing issues that are a little awry I would suggest the contrast is a little high and secondly I suspect you have applied NR to the background and at the perimeter of the birds you can see the junction of the NR and sharpening. The quick selection tool would work very well to isolate the birds, maybe set the Tolerance to 10 and even less in certain areas to make the selection accurate. Hope this helps.