Juvenile Purple Gallinule

[Joseph Przybyla]

I captured this image at Circle B Bar Reserve in Polk County, Florida. Comments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D7000
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED shot at 400mm
1/1600 F/5.6 Matrix Metering EV 0 ISO 450 AWB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom CC and Photoshop CC 2017, smoothed a couple out of focus areas in background in Photoshop using the Paint Brush as 20% opacity, corrected specular highlights on feet an blemishes on the perch in Photoshop using the Clone Stamp, Patch Tool, and Spot Removal Tool
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Geoffrey Montagu]

Excellent capture, Joe. Nice handling of the harsh light, and I like the head turn with eye contact. Love those large feet grasping the narrow perch. Perfect BG.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice! I like that the wing is drooping down a bit to add interest. Love those feet too! Sharp details. Pointing your lend left a bit more would have strengthened the comp.

[Lorant Voros]

Nice and colorful with an interesting pose. I feel like having some more room above and put the bird more to the right would help. TFS

[gail bisson]

Hi Joe,
I love this one and am surprised you don't have more comments. Love the bird and the BG and the slight wing droop of the gallinule. Also nice light and a great pose from the bird.
The comp is off and I agree with the above suggestions from others. I took the liberty to add some canvas top and left ( took 2 minutes with content aware fill) to give you a rough idea of what I would like.
Well done and would love this in my files,
Gail

[Isaac Grant]

Perfect pose, perch and background on this shot. Only certain times of year when they come to the tops of the grasses right? I agree with the comp issue mentioned above. To me the face is not as sharp as the rest of the bird.

[Glenn Pure]

Joe, you've got a wonderful shot here. One I'd be very happy to have. I love so much about it: the pose, the colours, the detail including the legs, the perch and the background. The bird looks fairly sharp to me but always hard to tell on these small images. As for composition, I agree some on the top of the frame helps. I don't think it needs any more on the left though. I've noticed it's quite common on this forum where a subject's body is pointing one way but head turned the other that the preferred composition is biased for the head turn/direction of gaze. This doesn't always work for me. In this case, I think your relatively central placement balances body direction with the gaze nicely... but hard to argue with the experience and skill of others!

[arash_hazeghi]

love the pose and the perch and the BG, sharp with good detail. love the view of the feet. I see a sublet green cast

TFS

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing, commenting, and suggesting improvements. Very much appreciated...

Lorant, Gail, and Isaac.. in this repost I applied your suggestions of moving the bird right (the same as Daniel's suggestion of pointing the lens a little more left). Thanks Gail for doing the edit to show me what you meant.

Isaac, not sure why the head does not appear as sharp as the rest. I checked the focus point and the active locked focus point was on the bill and front face. Regarding when the Purple Gallinules are out in the open, yes, only one time of the year timed to when the Fire Flat/Arrowroot plant is in blossom. Most times late July, August, and early September. This year they have not blossomed yet, winter drought and heavy summer rains seems to be delaying the blossoming.

Arash, I reduced the greens a tad.

Glenn, I am with you in a composition placement of a bird that is looking back without any other element in the image. Too far right and it feels unbalanced (to me anyways). I think Gail's repost, just a little right of center is about right.