weekly theme : too many rules broken

[pat lillich]

I know the theme was to intentionally break rules, but wanted to share a photo i took before i had even remotely grasped the concepts of head angle, pointing your shadow at the bird, eye contact, virtual legs and undoubtably many more.

love the photo anyway. early morning in Ft. Myers, FLA

nikon d300, 200-400, 1/500th at f9, iso 800, aperture priority,

added a little clarity and vibrance in LR and gave it a little vignette,
cloned out some spots on the sensor in PS, played with curves to bring out detail in the feathers, a little NR and sharpening.

[Indranil Sircar]

Beautiful backlight composition, Pat. I like the pose and the morning light. The backlit shrimp definitely adds a lot to image. The only minor change I will suggest is to straighten the ripple lines.

[Steve Adkins]

Fun image! The unique pose and soft lighting add to the interesting action. TFS

[Ken Childs]

Pat, I'd be pretty happy with a shot like this because I love backlit images!
I agree that the ripple lines should be leveled out but not for the purpose of this theme. :)

[Myer Bornstein]

I agree with all of the above TFS

[denise ippolito]

Pat, Beautiful soft color palette. The translucent shrimp adds so much to the image. I really like the way the head is turned to show the shrimp perfectly. I agree w/ Indranil regarding the rotation. Very nice image.

[pat lillich]

<grin!> ---- see, I was thinking it was sidelit ---
(to be honest it was really just --- oh look, there is a bird and its catching stuff! with no thought of where the light was - i was still in the "can i focus more or less on the bird before it flies away" phase....... ok, I'm still in that phase.)

thanks for your kindness, I'll try some rotation to straighten the ripples. just wish it was sharper and i'd given him legs, and i could get the morning light a nicer color, and, and, .....

[Kaustubh Deshpande]

This is a pretty neat image. I like backlit a lot....nice effect on the prey. One issue I see is noise in the bird...doing sharpening a bit conservatively might have helped there.

[Paul Lagasi]

I'd love to see how, this would translate to high key, agree with leveling water but I wonder how the bill and prey angle will be, leg and bill make a good right angle??. Really nice capture

[Van Hilliard]

I like the photo as is. If you rotate, the bird would look like it was falling over -- unless you intend to rotate the water without rotating the bird.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Pat, I love backlighting and I like this one. The shrimp is great:)

[Christopher Miller]

Very nice image, Pat. Lovely pose and backlighting, and the shrimp is a great touch. Personally I would place the bird a little more to the left.

[pat lillich]

ran thru processing it again - straightened it just a little in LR, which required bringing the edges in a bit - which put it a little more to the left. I think it is ok, though now there is more of a feeling that the bird is about to step forward...

this time thru I left the bird a little darker, which I kind of liked - but also tried the high key and liked that too ---- Kaustaubh, I tried to sharpen a little more conservatively, but am not sure it was enough. The image is pretty noisy.
Would appreciate hearing if this slightly different version is more or less interesting...

thank you so much for all the input!

[Judy Howle]

I think it's a great capture with the position of the head and the translucent shrimp. Hard to decide which I like better. The bird is a bit dark in this one but I like the shrimp better.