Tundra Swans On The Wing

[Norm Dulak]

Nikon D7000 w/Nikkor 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6 vr (original) lens @ 240mm, hand held
ISO 800; f/7.1, 1/4000 sec; MM -0.33
PP: Topaz DeNoise 4; Nik Color Efex Pro 4 Tonal Contrast; PS CS6 standard adjustments, crop & sharpen

Each summer, Fairlee Creek on Maryland's Eastern Shore becomes filled with lotus plants. And each fall those plants sink beneath the surface of the creek, acting as a virtual magnet for hundreds of Tundra Swans that spend the winter on the creek, "tippling" to consume the plants. In this image, a group of the swans approaches the creek.

All comments and suggestions are as always welcome.

Norm

[hennieloots]

Hi Norm - Beautiful image with the whites and the cream color on the birds working well on the light bg. I like the wing position and details; great capture. I could also see this in a 16:9 comp reducing the number of birds to the top 3 and coming in from the top; the bottom bird seems a bit "left out" IMO. TFS.
Regards
Hennie

[Jim Crosswell]

Nice image Norm. I agree with Hennie on the composition suggestion and before reading it was thinking the same thing.

[Randy Stout]

Norm:

Nice to see the Tundra swans. We get a few coming through my area of Michigan each year, but not many.

I like the soft horizontal bands in the background, gives a nice sense of flow.

There are processing halos around the birds, while the plumage seems a bit too smooth in some areas, as if the noise reduction extended onto the birds.

Interesting comp. thoughts from Hennie. I can see the point, and would try a version that way as well.

Look forward to more images of them this winter.

Cheers

Randy

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks everyone for your comments.

To see what the group of three alone would look like, I went back to a file without noise reduction and revised it. Following Randy's comments, I also tried to improve feather definition. The result is shown here. The tradeoff is that there is now more noise in the darker areas on the birds, and the degree of cropping is now very substantial. Still, it's interesting to compare the two images.

For Randy, I'm sorry to hear that you don't see many swans. But we have no loons. Maybe we could talk the birds into an exchange program!

[hennieloots]

Hi Norm - Thanks for the RP, I like.
Hennie

[Randy Stout]

Norm:

I like the flow of repost better, IQ losses as u noted. a little more room below and to the right.

I am blessed with a number
of trumpeter swans nearby, few tundras.

Although I know some of the loons pretty well, they haven't discussed my making travel arrangements for them yet!

Randy

[Martin Dunn]

Norm, I like the repost.
I was staring at the original post trying to work out how best to get away from the square format (don't know why but I just don't like square crops), then I scrolled down and saw that other shad the same thought.
There is some noise and the sharpness is not razor but the repost definitely has the edge for me