Four Posers

[Randy Stout]

Four posing fellows at Little Estero in the fog, on Artie's presidents day IPT. I tried 4-5 different perspectives on this shot, but preferred this one because of the separation of the reflections.

Nikon D300
70-200 2.8 VR
70mm
F/16
EV +.3
Handheld
Minor curves,contrast tweaks
Cropped for composition

Appreciate any thoughts and suggestions for improvement

[Tony Whitehead]

I like this, Randy. Warm tone is nice and I like the differing sizes and poses with gaze in different directions. I would be tempted to crop to eliminate the bits of shoreline and the bird without a complete reflection. Well done with the small aperture to give DOF to cover the birds - it has revealed a significant dust bunny on the left though.

[Randy Stout]

Tony:

Thanks so much for your comment and repost. I do like it. I thought getting the four birds in a row was good, and I tried to balance the mud on the bottom with the spit on top. I think your repost is more elegant, and really emphasizes the reflections, which are very important to the image.

I had removed the dust bunny while prepping the image, but in the final resizing I must have deleted a retouch phase. The work was done in NX2, and sometimes I knock out a step.

Cheers

[W T Lloyd]

Cool shot, and I agree the re-cropped photo has more elegance...Less can be more!

[Jasper Doest]

Nice and elegant...the repost is very well chosen IMO. Well seen, congrats!

[Randy Stout]

Thanks Peter:

I do like your version as well. I left the mud spit in at top in an attempt to balance out the mud mass in lower right corner. I didn't want to crop the lower right bird too tight, wanted a bit of room for him to look into. Yes, the head angle of the back bird is off, but somehow it adds to the feel of the picture for me.

Thanks for the comments!

Randy

[Ramon M. Casares]

Both repost and also the original post are stunnig and very beautifull, thge mood is great, don´t ask me why but I really like Tony´s crop. Great image as said, wonderfull mood. Congratulaitons!

[Joe Senzatimore]

Love both the original and the re-posts. Great feeling to this image. Fog can be a wonderful thing at times.

[Bill McCrystyn]

All are nice but my vote would have to go to Tony. Nice find and a beautiful image.