Little Pied Cormorant

[Glenn Pure]

One of our most common cormorants. This one photographed at a golf course dam a short walk from home and was not sure about me. I really love the feather patterns on the wings of these birds. Crop is just over a quarter of the frame area. Thank you for taking a look and any comments you may wish to share.

Capture details: Canon 80D with EF100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS II USM at 400mm handheld. Manual exposure 1/1000 sec, f7.1, ISO 1000. Processed in Canon DPP 4 (digital lens optimiser @ 50, sharpness = 3, crop, lighting adjustments, default NR) then exported 16 bit TIFF to Photoshop Elements with Neat Image NR plugin. Very light NR applied to bird and stronger NR to background. Sharpened in PSE (Sharpness tool, remove Gaussian blur) after final size reduction.

[Tim Foltz]

Glenn, nice image, sharp, great pose, details and expose, I might loose the dark band across the top of the BG but other than that… I like it

-Tim

[Tomasz Zawadzki]

I agree that dark band on top of the image could be removed. If possible i would add a bit more bottom. Other than that a lovely image of lovely bird.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Glenn, a Cormorant I have not see before. Looks good for a large crop. Beautiful feather pattern on the back of the bird, perfect background, nice head turn back. Ditto to removing the dark band. Thank you for sharing.

[William Dickson]

Hi Glenn. Beautiful detail on the bird, lovely pose, nice perch and a great BG, all come together to make a lovely image. Was there any particular reason you chose to leave the dark band on the BG. Was it to break up the BG and give the image some depth?

Will

[Robert Kimbrell]

A very nice image Glenn. Beautifully exposed blacks on the back feathers with nice detail. Good pose he gave you and the background is pleasing.

[Isaac Grant]

Agree with what has been said. Details look very nice. Pose and background as well. I would lose the dark band. Also I would try to add some canvas and make this a vertical shot. I think it would work better.

[Glenn Pure]

Thank you all for looking and commenting. I see the dark band has attracted comments as I suspected it might. It is the OOF dam edge by the way. My choice in leaving it there is simply a reflection of my evolving ethos about adding or removing visual elements. I still do this sometimes but am getting increasing uncomfortable with it. I agree, though, that the frame would be visually stronger without the band and value your views on this.