Northern Pintail in flight

[supreet.sahoo]

Would like to start my first thread in this beautiful forum (as a member) with a shot of this Northern Pintail (female) which was shot at the Mangalajodi backwaters in India last week. As a practice I used to crop a lot in the past but have consciously started adding more habitat to my images off late.

Please be as critical as possible to make this a great learning ground for me in the future.

Specs: Canon 7d, 300 f4, 1.4x tcII, ISO 640, 7.1, 1/2000, EV 0






Kind regards
Supreet
https://www.facebook.com/supreet.sahoo
http://500px.com/gothikinsane

[Karl Egressy]

Nice shot and nice inclusion of the habitat. There is an obvious white halo around the bird which can be easily avoided. What you have to do is, select the bird only.
Then go to select, refine edge. Set smooth to 5-10, feather 0.5-2.0, and most importantly sift edge to minus 1-3.
Then do the sharpening on the bird only. I hope this will help.

[supreet.sahoo]

Thanks Karl for the correction. I have edited it as per the info and this how it looks:

[Bobo Madar]

Much improved with the edit.

[Mike Milicia]

Good job removing the halo.
You got a great wing position here. Image seems a bit dark overall.
Biggest issue for me is the bird is flying at an angle slightly away from you.
Having the bird parallel or, better yet, angled slightly toward you tends to give the viewer much more of a connection with the subject.

[supreet.sahoo]

Good job removing the halo.
You got a great wing position here. Image seems a bit dark overall.
Biggest issue for me is the bird is flying at an angle slightly away from you.
Having the bird parallel or, better yet, angled slightly toward you tends to give the viewer much more of a connection with the subject.

Sure Mike, will work on the compo going forward. Infact I have a couple of shots of the male of the same species which I will post in the coming days which is flying parallel. Thanks for the input.

[Don Nelson]

Repost is well done. Nice wing position. Agree with the body position (flying away) comments previously.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hi Supreet, welcome to BPN as a member! Nice female pintail here, and you got her in a nice full-down wing position. Too bad she is angling away though, which as pointed out already is the main issue here. Other smaller things that can be taken into consideration is the comp which, although is not bad, could be strenghtened by taking a bit off the top IMO. I would also remove the two brighter spots at bottom. Great job eliminating the halo for the repost. I do like the setting, and I am looking forward to your images of the male...

[Matthew Studebaker]

Exposure: good
Detail: excellent on the second (corrected) post
Light: good
Pose: facing away but not bad
Background: nice and clean. slight CCW rotation to level the horizon
Composition: I like the space you left in the image

[Karl Egressy]

Great job on removing the halo, Supreet.