Eurasian Curlew

Eurasian Curlew (Numenius arquata).
Image taken with a Canon EOS 1D Mark III and a Canon 100-400; shooting manual mode (Av 5.6, Tv 1/1000, EC -1/3 stop).

This curlew was feeding by sticking his beak deep into the mud, some mud can be seen in the beak.

http://www.pbase.com/jaimoten/image/...5/original.jpg




Comments & criticism welcome, thanks for your time and opinion :-)

Cheers

Jaime:

Beautiful markings on your bird, the mud on bill helps tell the story, as does the intense gaze.
You might try to recover some of the whites on top of the birds right leg.
Often a lower shooting angle gives a more 'intimate' feel to the image, but in this case it might of aggravated the effect of the mud behind the bird, unless you could get very low and throw it out of focus.

Hope to see more.

Cheers

Randy

Nice striding pose and intense focus on feeding, Jaime. Good points by Randy re BG.

Thanks for your insight, guys. It has already made me think on how to improve my techniques.
Regarding to lower shooting angle, while I think it could have improved the background adding some reeds to it, I was actually shooting from inside a hide on a Natural Park. There are many convenient hides, but OTOH you cannot go farther and find a better perspective.

Regards

Jaime

Great bird and sharp. EXP good but a bit dark as presented. The huge problem is that the bird's head is angled away from the viewer and from the light.... That is why the face is so dark.... The merge of the head with the mud is also a problem. Ans smooth, clean, tide-washed mud would have been a big improvement.

I know that photographing from a hide can be difficult but all that we can do here is comment on the image itself not on the difficulty :)

Thanks for the time on my picture, Arthur!
I understand what you explain, and I guess that (not so) little things like that make the difference between a good enough picture and a astonishing portrait of a bird. Or, following the line, a good picture and art (if I may put it that way, with your permission).
For the time being, and given the limitations (time to devote to photography, budget), I'll be happy with this kind of result.
And of course, I'll be happy to publish pictures like that in the hope of receiving valuable criticism/advise. Which will help me to improve.

Thanks again Arthur, Tony, Randy.

Best regards

Thanks for understanding Jaime. And yes, the goal is to improve so get to work! We look forward to seeing more of your work and more on this bird.