Osprey 2

[thijs broekkamp]

Another picture of a osprey on the cape verde islands. Curious what you guys think.

Canon 30d with canon 300mm f4, f4.5 1/1000e.

http://i957.photobucket.com/albums/ae54/thijsbroekkamp/Kaapverdie/IMG_8120bwrktsrgb.jpg

[Richard Stern]

It would be nice to see it a bit larger (1024 pixels along the horizontal axis). The eye is sharp, but to me the body looks a bit less so. The molt is interesting, but I feel it makes for a rather ragged-looking bird. The sky is a nice blue, but it would be nice to have some other point of interest.

Richard

[Axel Hildebrandt]

The wing position and eye contact are very good. The eye looks noticeably sharper than the rest of the bird and I would tone down the highlights more.

[Randy Stout]

Thijs:

Good comments above. I particularly want to reinforce the sky comment by Richard.
BIF images can be rather uninteresting from a compositional standpoint because they often lack balance, or other points of interest that add to the story. Clouds, a range of hills in the BG, etc, can really give much more impact to the image. If I have only the bird, I generally will crop in pretty tight on the bird, so that it is almost a portrait. Some room to fly into, but make the bird big enough to carry the image.

Cheers

Randy

[thijs broekkamp]

Thanks for the comments. Indeed what you guys say, there must be some cloud or something like that in the sky. But such things you don't have in control, because the bird flies wherever he wants! 'll try to sharpen up the rest of the bird.