THEME: black birds--winter Brandt's cormorant

[Jake Levin]

An overcast January day in La Jolla, CA with lots of winter plumage Brandt's cormorants sitting around and posing. Nothing like their breeding season feathers, but you wanted a black bird, right??!?

7d mkII, 300mm f/2.8 and 1.4x III TC, 1/320 @ f/5.6, ISO 800. Post processed in ACR/Photoshop.

[keith mitchell]

Lovely eye colour and fine detailed feathers,exposure looks spot on,can't see anything that I would change.

[John Whaley]

A beautiful clear eye and good exposure with fine feather detail. The BG suits the portrait composition and compliments the Cormorants color. Well done.

[Bill Dix]

Well exposed, nice detail and pose. Sometimes I find a 1 px border around a high-key image can help, but that's a personal preference.

[Brian Desjardins]

Bonjour Jake, Tres belle photo, great shot, lots of feather detail, nice pose, the eye jumps out at you, well done! Thank you for sharing.



Brian

[Isaac Grant]

Nice high key shot and detail look great to me. I love the blue eye. You have a gray patch below the tip of the beak and to the left that needs to be cloned out. Also i wish the wing on the right was not so out of focus. I know the struggle with the 7d2. Would have been best if your fstop were at maybe f8, but then you would have had a much lower shutter speed. 1/320 is already low so it is always a compromise. Considering the conditions I think you did very well.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Looks good. The blacks are just right, and the details really nice. Good vertical comp. I'm OK with the far wing, but I would eliminate the two small white specks in the line between that wing and chest. Super cool looking eye!