Scissortail Play

[Richard Smith]

Against my better judgement, I'm going to post this image because I want to see what everyone thinks. It's two scissortails at a local lake in OKC. It's at the very end of the day today. The light is low, the SS is high, the ISO is high and the NR is high because the raw is noisy. And it's cropped a bit. But the scissortail is a beautiful little bird that flits around like crazy and is very hard to catch in flight. I like the play between the one that's perched and the one that's flying. I also like the blur of the wings. So tell me what you think.

Canon 7DII. Tamron 70-300VC @ 300mm. 1/1600 @ f8. ISO 6400

[John Whaley]

Richard - It looks like a beautiful scene and I like the wispy branches but for me it needs better focus on one or both birds. On my monitor both are soft.

[Isaac Grant]

Richard I think that this is a nice behavioral shot, but not a good photo for critique. The birds are soft and lacking in fine feather details. They are also way too small in the frame as well. The image is too contrasty, the background needs to be lightened. The image needs to be leveled as you can see the horizon lines are lower on the left. The twigs on the right should be cloned out, there is something odd under the flying bird, maybe a twig or something that had too much noise reduction? For me this would be a delete. Trying to give an honest critique as that is what I think is special about this site.