Little Bird, Big Bird
And now for something a little different. I almost deleted this one, but when I cropped it I decided it had a certain amusing aspect to it, and I liked the position of the Dowitcher vis-a-vis the preening White Pelican. Comments?
D7000, 500f4 + 1.4x, ISO 800, 1/2500s @ f/7.1 manual
Last edited by Peter Kes; 12-17-2012 at 05:37 PM.
The Dowitcher is really nice and sharp with excellent pose. The pelican in the background looks really huge to me compare to the Dowitcher, so in a way the pelican act as a nice point of size reference. However I would prefer the pelican to be at the bottom, not on top since I'm not fancy about its reflection here, but that probably personal preference. Nice to see something new, keep them coming :)
While your dowitcher looks pretty darn good, and I love the fact that you were thinking outside the box and going for something different, this particular image isn't working for me. I wish I could articulate exactly why, but I guess it's just from my gut.
This is one of those images that will garner a wide selection of opinion and feelings about it!! From the thumb I had certain reservations about it, but I was pleasantly surprised once viewing it larger. The dowitcher looks great and gave you a fabulous banking pose. The pelican is rather large, yes, but enough OOF to be part of the scenery and be discernible...I also like that it is busy preening. For me the most important part is that the dowitcher's bill is set between the pelican and reflection and the wingtips are against the whites...pretty neat luck here.
The Dowitcher looks very good, Bill. Great banking pose and sharpness.
I find the Pelican too bright in the image. I would try to create a layer of the background with the pelican and use average blur at around 10-15 % or other means od making it less visible.
Thanks all. I knew this wouldn't be everyone's cup of tea. Honest critiques are what makes BPN great.
Thanaboon, I had the same initial reaction; I even tried a version where I moved the Dowitcher into a different position. But I decided to keep it as the camera captured it. Besides a serious crop and some USM on the Dowitcher, all I did was to reduce the brightness on the pelican. Karl, I suppose I might have reduced it even further per your comment. I didn't want the pelican so blurred that it became unrecognizable, as Daniel points out. Here's a repost with just a little blurring and some further brightness reduction on the bg. It does make the pelican compete less with the dowitcher.
This is great work, although I do assume you shot the BIF and noticed the OOF pelican later?
I'm glad you didn't bin it!
Thanks Morkel. You're right. Sometimes when I'm standing out there waiting for something to happen, I practice my tracking skills by trying to acquire focus on a bird that is really too far away for a quality shot. That was the case here. I clicked off several frames of him, and was surprised when I looked in the camera later and saw the pelican.Originally Posted by Morkel Erasmus
Hi Bill,
The repost looks better for sure.
Let's see what others will have to say.
Bill, the Dowitcher is very sharp and has a great wing position. Never know what the bg is going to be like when you are tracking a BIF. To be honest I didnt love the pelican in the BG but the repost helped allot. Your BIF skills are getting real good. Keep it up!
Thanks David.
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