my first post here

[Morten Romild]

The swans going north this is a early spring picture from last week ,not much light.
Iso 200, F5,6,1/2000
Canon 100-400 L at 400mm
Canon 50D
http://photos.romild.dk/Animals/2010/Kalvebod-fælled-spring-2010/IMG1644/832545813_FWir5-X2.jpg

[Randy Stout]

Morten:

A big welcome to BPN. It is a great place to learn and grow as a photographer.

I like the feel of the image, clouds add depth and a sense of altitutde.. Sharp and well exposed.

The image would be stronger if you didn't have the merge of the two birds. Always tough, but something to shoot for.

Generally, birds angling towards the viewer add more of a sense of involvement, intimacy to the image, but as a story telling device, them angling away gives the impression of leaving, going somewhere, and works for me.

The framing of the image also works well to tell that story for me.

Cheers, and again, welcome.

Randy

[Morten Romild]

Like this?

http://photos.romild.dk/Animals/2010/Kalvebod-fælled-spring-2010/IMG1652/832561418_J9rrm-X2.jpg
or this with a aircraft flying the other way, but unsharp
http://photos.romild.dk/Animals/2010/Kalvebod-fælled-spring-2010/IMG1642/832549675_B95pn-X2.jpg

[Joe Senzatimore]

Randy makes some very valid and strong points. I might take a bit off the bottom , just my taste. Like the image in the first post the best. Welcome to BPN and keep them coming. great place to learn.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hey Morten, welcome to BPN!!:)

Nice subjects. Do you have any frames before they passed you? Although the swans flying away does tell a story of them going somewhere far away, I still find images of birds flying at least parallel to the lens is best. The clouds certainly add interest here, and you have a particularly pleasing shade of blue in the sky.

Looks like you had plenty of light to me...high shutter speeds with only ISO 200! You could boost the ISO to 400, and stop down the lens to f/8 instead of wide open (although the birds are far away, this would give you more chances of getting every bird sharp with a bit more DOF covered)

Again, welcome to BPN...and don't forget that images should not be wider than 1024 pixels, or larger than 200kb;).

[Morten Romild]

thanks for the comments, The problem was I was actually driving my bike home(There are no cars allowed in the reservate) When the swans suddenly came. Hadent time to manual set my settings, as you can see from the rest of the pictures from that day, they were much higher ISO to catch the birds.

photos.romild.dk/Animals/2010/Kalvebod-fælled-spring-2010/11787633_bvvZn#832546154_wBFMK (http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/photos.romild.dk/Animals/2010/Kalvebod-fælled-spring-2010/11787633_bvvZn#832546154_wBFMK)

I will take a smaller size picture from smugmug next time.

[Deborah Hanson]

Actually, I like the first post (very top one). I find it intriguing that the birds are flying one way but the lines are pointing the opposite way (the arrow that the formation makes points to the left) - for me, anyway.
The birds look sharp.
I thought that the techs looked alright to me.

It's an interesting image.
Deb