Arctic Tern in Habitat

[John Ippolito]

Anchorage Coastal Wildlife Refuge
D800, 500/4 VR, ISO 640, f/4.5, 1/3200

[gail bisson]

This is really nice John. I like the wing position, the visible eye with great catchlight, the flowing tail feathers and the light.
Excellent "small in the frame" environmental image.
I think that every critique will have a personal opinion on position of bird in the frame as it is such a matter of personal taste.
For my taste I would like a bit off the bottom and LHS so that the tern is more in the LLC.
I find the blade of grass that runs diagonally in front of the tern a bit distracting.
Gail

[dankearl]

I like the "big " picture environment photos but feel they need some FG vegetation in focus to work well for me.
As is, I would like the bird larger in the frame as the environment is all OOF. The exposure looks great and the bird is nice.
It also seems a bit noisy for iso 640 and not much of a crop.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi John, love the light in this, and the tern is nice and sharp. Well exposed with good underwing detail, and I really like the varied colourful BG. Comp wise, I would move the tern a little back to the URC.

[christopher galeski]

nice image,like the BG,pose,nice detail and good eye contact.thanks.

[Randy Stout]

John:

Nice sense of the environment here, like the subtle blue/grays on the upper right which plays well with the tern.

Comp. is always a fun part of such images. For me, with the down stroke and slight downward angle of his body, in a perfect world, I would place him at the right upper ROT point (Which is where I think Stuart was headed.} Very subjective, but that is part of the fun for this style of image.

Sharp, well exposed, nice detail for such small in frame subject.

Cheers

Randy

[John Ippolito]

Thanks everyone. I agree with all of your helpful comments. I posted the wrong image