Scratch scratch

[Adhika Lie]

Since they can't preen their nape, they scratch. Here is a picture of a Western Grebe scratching. This is shot at 600mm, f/6.3, 1/4000. The entire frame is just water and I think the elongated 16x9 crop rather suits the elongated shape of the bird in this photo. Any inputs?

[Glennie Passier]

Hello Adhika. What a comical pose. I'm finding it difficult to tell which part of his foot is which. Do you have any more room on the RHS? IMO, I think the bird gets lost in all the water. Are you able to move the crop around and maybe make it squarish, without so much water on top and in front? Maybe the IQ will suffer?

[Jim Keener]

[Chuckling.] That bird looks so serious. I'm glad you posted this. Did you have to wait long for it to develop? For my tastes, I would drop the top and bring in the left. You're correct. Lots of water.

[Doug West]

This is one image where I'd put him dead center. The reason are the circular ripples. With the
Grebe in the center the ripples will get more focus versus them getting cropped off.


Kinda like what I did here:

http://www.thebirdphotographer.com/p...dc86#h276ddc86

Doug

[Adhika Lie]

Thanks everyone. I take Doug's comment to heart but unfortunately this picture doesn't have anymore room on the right to show the water ripple. So I started looking on the image sequence when I took this picture and I found this one. I really love that water ripple. Thank you so much Doug for the suggestion.

What do you guys think?

p

[Adhika Lie]

On a separate note, I think I need to fix the hue on the water. It seems wrong or is it not?

[Doug West]

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. In the first one, the ripple kinda gets lost. But by
centering the bird more, the ripples become more prominent.

As far as the color, the hue looks ok to me.

Doug

[Glennie Passier]

That's better. That's exactly what I was hedging at when I mentioned if you had anymore room on the RHS. Well done. The water looks very blue..but maybe it was that colour?

[Diane Miller]

Very nice, with good suggestions above. Birds are cute and funny when they scratch.