Leading the Flock

[Sanjeevprakash]

I took this shot of a group of Oyster catcher at Nickerson Beach.They were flying in a group for a while and it was fun to watch them.I wished that the last two of them were banking in unison with the two in front of them.Any suggestion on a better crop?or this looks best? TIA

D300s ,Nikon 300mm f 2.8 AFS-I ,TC 14e,1/2000S, F/5, ISO-200,Manual Exposure on tripod with Gimbal Head.

[Kerry Perkins]

Hi Sanjeev, very nice catch of the formation flying! I'm not thinking crop here as much as I'm thinking deletion of the two birds with the non-conforming wing position. Didn't they get the email about wing position? With the neutral gray background you have here it would be very easy to remove those two birds and even move the other three around to suit your ideal. This is assuming that you would approve of such image manipulation, and I would understand if you didn't. I did play with this image in Photoshop CS6 and I can tell you that it is really easy to alter this image with content aware fill and content aware move tool. Having said that, I do like the image as is but feel that the lead bird has a wing position that is not ideal. I don't mind the trailing bird so much, but the one on the left is a bit too flat for my taste. Decent job on the exposure but note that the red channel is clipped in the brightest areas of white. I would have chosen ISO 400 for several reasons and am puzzled by the fact that so many posters here are using low ISO on cameras that easily support ISO 400 and beyond as baseline. The benefits of higher shutter speeds and smaller apertures far outweigh any concerns about noise IMO.

[Sanjeevprakash]

Thanks Kerry.Apreciate that you took the time to review and critique my image constructively.Its been slightly over 6 months that I took birding seriously,hence lots to learn yet.I am not very good at PP as I do the basic in LR3 like Highligts,shadows,Noise and sharpening.Thats about it and at times some cloning of BG if the frame demands.The D300s tends to be generous towards Noise,therefor I set the ISO to 200 and do not use auto ISO function in hopes of not loosing a good frame due to overt Noise.But I think I'll have to step up to the plate and try different tricks of the trade to improve the skill.
I do see the red cast on the white areas of the bird.I'll try and fix them.
Thanks once again.

[Ian Cassell]

I actually like the fact that the lead bird has a different wing position and a closed bill. It's as though he's concentrating on the flight and all of the other guys are yakking among themselves to the tune of "where do you suppose he's taking us now?" Aside from that bit of clipping, I do like this image. It might be fun to play with the BG and change it to a blue sky with clouds, but that may be a bit over the top. It would be easy to do, however, in PP. I'm just starting to play with content aware move in CS6 and, with the homogeneous BG here, you could do a lot to rearrange your birds if you were so inclined. In all, I really like this one.

[Bob Miller]

Glad to see you got seperation between the birds...This is not always easy to do. If it were mine I would bring out some blues in the sky with PS or even replace the sky.