THEME: Trumpeter Swan with a strange case of the yellows
Canon 7D; 100-400 at 400mm, iso800, 1/2500, f7.1
Hello birdfiends! I am delighted to occasionally encounter a trumpeter swan with yellow in the lores, reminiscent of one our much-cherished tundra (or, whistling) swans, but of course this trumpeter s. is considerably larger, more unruly, and the bill's different, and so forth. In any event, I am glad to post this happy ghost for your ultimate acceptance and/or rejection! My settings aren't where I would have liked them (too high in the iso & shutter speed both) but just the second before I was taking pictures of guys flying. Oh well!
IThis image is all about the yellow in the lores and the red under the bill. I'd suggest cropping in as much as the IQ will allow and then present as a tight portrait. There are indeed some cool colors there.
I appreciate your input, croppers! Truly I do! Obviously I'm trying to showcase this fine specimen as well as a background and environment that I find very beautiful and ghostly indeed. Luckily, the bird was most approachable and so I did take some closer looks and pictures as well.
RE this month's theme: I am presenting a portrait of the swan and his environs rather than just a frame-filling swan. Perhaps unacceptable for this month's theme?
Jack, try this on for size. In your description of the image you mention the importance of the yellow lores. I would also suggest that the red is a prominant element in this frame. What happened to me when I opened this thread up was my eye immediately left the bird and drifted up into the bright areas of the upper right. I believe that there are composition options that would allow you to keep your important background elements as part of the presentation but reduce their dominance and allow the viewer to apprecite your subject first and then his habitat secondly. Just my 2 cents.
Jack, another of your wonderful backgrounds here!! Ghostly it is! I've often tried to do something like this and rarely succeeded. It takes the perfect setting.
The brightness of the neck pulls my eye to the bottom of the frame -- I'd try to lower the whites there, to get more detail in them and maybe give the impression of a shadow being cast across the lower neck -- something we'd normally want to avoid, but to give a base to the image I think it could work.
Grace and Diane: many thanks. I will try your suggestions out, truly I will. They are very much appreciated. Certainly I agree about toning down the whites. I am rather reluctant to crop this picture but there's no harm in trying, that's for sure...
Ha! Thank you Grace, that's awfully kind. Once my mind is made up as to a picture's composition it's hard to get away from it. I'm sure you can relate! Then sometimes you come back to a picture later and you say "What a dunderhead I was, the picture should be cropped THIS way, etc." It's quite an enjoyable exercise, all of this.
THEME: Trumpeter Swan with a strange case of the yellows
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