AirBrakes

[Bill Foxworthy]

Canon EOS 40D
f/7.1. 1/800sec
100-400 f/4.5-5.6 lens at 400mm
ISO 500, 7:56am
Partial metering and Daylight 5000K WB
Palmetto, Fl
I removed a feather by cloning that came over the birds head and also removed some distractions along the bottom using the patch/clone tool in CS3

[Tony Whitehead]

Nice light Bill - that background looks almost metallic. It is quite bright and to me distracts from the bird. I would try a tight crop to just contain the bird. The head and eye looks sharp and make a good focal point but are a bit small in the frame. It looks a fraction overexposed to me with - if this is a raw file it may be worth reprocessing with -1/3 to -1/2 stop exposure.

[Bill Foxworthy]

Hi Tony. I guess that I need to explain the water in this image. The reflection behind the pelican is a combination of Mangroves and a dock's pilings about 50-75 yards away and that created this green/bronze background around 7:30am. I only use RAW images and can reprocess this almost anyway but this has almost no adjustments done to it. I wondered why no-one was commenting on this so I thank you for that. When I first started on here, everything was too tight a crop and needed room around everything. Now it needs more crop and I dont think that a little of the right and bottom would help much. Thanks anyway. . . .

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Pose and BG look good to me. I would try to tone down the whites a bit. They don't appear to be hot but quite bright.

[joel quenneville]

Great landing. I love the color of the water. The image looks a little soft on my moniter. Perhaps a bit of USM would help.