Horned puffins

Also called"Eskimo Kiss" but i was worried that may be politically incorrect.Another from Matthew Studebaker's fantastic Nome workshop.
We took a 1 1/2 hr motorboat excursion to Sledge Island and climbed the packed ice (as high as 40 feet in some places:Whoa!:)around the shore for these shots.
Canon 1DX
f 600mm II and 1.4x
ISO 800 F 6.3 SS 1/800 on tripod
Cropped to 60% FF.
Cleaned up bird droppings on rock face on the lower left side.
PP: crop, levels, reduced blue in color balance, detail extractor on TIFF and USM on jpeg.
Comments and critiques always appreciated and learned from with thanks,
Gail

Gail that sounds like lots of fun . This is a sweet image and I like how you composed it. I like the huge crack in the boulder and the yellow colors in the bg. I would like to see this cropped some from the top as I thing it lessens the business of the bg while keeping the cool yellow area to the right. of the bg

Sweet moment captured here, such great looking birds the Puffins. I would consider cropper quite a bit harder to remove more the darker cave are behind and also the crack isn't quite so dominant...it's sweet moment that I think needs isolating from the rest of the surrounds. Some more noise reduction could also be applied particularly above the birds

Great moment caught! Sounds like you earned this one!

I'd also suggest a crop from the top, to get rid of at least half of the dark area, and maybe some from the right. That way the birds command the attention they deserve!

Cool pose and sounds like a nice adventure.
I would just blur the BG a tad and crop a bit off the bottom and right side to move them out of
center but leave the crack in the frame.

Wonderful intimate moment captured. Love the poses,colors and composition.

Regards,
Satish.

very nice capture,nice detail in the birds,like the rock and the crack in it,agree on cropping the image.

Gail:


Cute interaction. I do have to agree with the folks above. The masses in the image with strong diagonal lines, tend to overpower the subject. Cropping tighter as suggested may refocus the image onto the birds. The single biggest component for me that distracts is the large yellow rock angling right down towards the birds.

Cheers

Randy

Great moment; sounds like you had fun capturing this one. I agree with above comments, even at the expense of a larger crop. The interaction is worth a little more attention in the frame than it gets here.

Hi Gail, sounds like lots of PT to have achieved this shot. :w3 Well exposed on both Puffins, and the tender moment captured timeously. Love the detail on their rock perch, large crevass included. Another vote for cropping tighter from the top, and then smoothening out what is left.

Thank you all for your thoughts. I tried cropping as per your suggestions but am not happy with the IQ of the puffins as the recropped image would be ~45% full frame so this one hits the trash!!
gail