Taken yesterday morning at out local lagoon. I've made the crop wide intentionaly to include a fair portion of the background as I feel it adds to the shots overall appearance
Richard, the cormorant looks very good...nice details, neat pose, beautiful perch. Exposure looks good, but the tough light gave you some strong contrast (both ends of the histogram are clipped, or appear to be). Although you provide a good reason for your composition I still think a hefty crop left and above would strengthen the image.
The cormorant does look excellent. I enjoy the pose/perfect head angle/exposure work.
I also agree that the contrasty light has rendered some background areas (shadows in particular)
as too commanding in the image. Mostly, the large dark shadow to the left of the bird is difficult
compositionally for me, because it pulls my eye, while the bird is looking in opposite direction.
Another consideration for cropping would be to present a tighter vertically oriented image.
Diminishing the impact of the shadow area to the left of the bird, regardless of how you do it, will
be an improvement imo.
Lovely details in your bird and I like the pose. Agree on a crop from the left, esp of the very dark spot which is quite distracting to your gorgeous subject.
Nice perch shot and pose! Fantastic details as well. I agree with chopping off the left and the top to conform with the rule of third. The blacks look great, but the whites near the right shoulder look a bit hot on my screen.
One thing I may add as that I do not think the cormorant looks too small in the frame. The reason for the crop suggestion is to help the comp. Another option in the field would have been to point your lens more to the right and down, you would have had the same amount of BG in the image but with a more balanced comp...
Thanks everyone for your positive critiques. Although not a big believer in following the crowd as far as convention goes I have rolled over and my repost takes into consideration all suggestions as I enterpret them.
Daniel, as always, many thanks for your input, you are quit right about the clipping at both ends as slight as they are. I tend to watch the peaks and have completely over looked 0 and 256, is there a possible a way I can avoid this either in camera or pping?
Also as the year drags into the very hot humid and dry pre wet season usually by around 0930 the light has become far to harsh to expect good natural colours but the shot was taken at 0734, the original RAW with no processing has that Canon oversaturated look about it that I'm sure we all get every now and then.
Lastly I had no room to get proper composition on the Cormerant because of the reeds which I just managed to avoid by stretching my body upwards from a seated postion on the ground, the bird was pretty suspicious of my precence as is.
Repost - 50% crop - attempt at quelching the whites using the ARC Tone Curve Parametric Highlights at -65 (not sure if I did the right thing here so please let me know, same goes for the +10 I added in Shadows) - Used the Dodge and Burn Tool on the dark and bright areas to the left and upper left of the bird.
Pied Cormorant
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