Early Morning Dive!

[Warren Spreng]

What I liked about this image is I felt I captured the overall mood of that early morning walk on the beach. Shooting into the sun isn't ideal but I like the lighting on the birds where they are just catching that golden glow as the sun rises. Comments and suggestions welcomed. Canon T3i, Tamron 150 -600mm, 600mm, ISO 800, f/6.3, 1/640, HH, very minor crop and added some canvas above the top bird so he wasn't so crowded in the frame. Minor lightening of the undersides of the birds and a slight tweak in vibrance.

[Diane Miller]

You did capture a nice morning mood. I'd look at a vertical crop on this one, or at least remove some from the left. I might add even more to the top.

Nice focus on the diving one, with the other one close enough to the focal plane. Hard to be sure at this scale but it looks like there may be some chromatic aberration on the top one. It is suffering a little in IQ (noise and tonal flatness), possibly from being lightened a little, or just from the pixels on the subject. Backlighting is a challenge. But the nicely-caught diving pose makes the top bird less of an issue.

[Warren Spreng]

Thanks Diane, I had thought about removing the top bird altogether but decided to leave it in as I felt it added to the overall mood of the image.

[Diane Miller]

The top bird is an interesting foil to the other one -- maybe going for more of a silhouette with it would work.

[Warren Spreng]

The top bird is an interesting foil to the other one -- maybe going for more of a silhouette with it would work.

Ooh, that's an interesting thought Diane, I'll have to give that a try!