Black Ibis in flight

[Sanjeev Aurangabadkar]

A Red-naped Ibis (Black Ibis) takes off at Lonavala, near Pune. Sadly no space if front of the bird, had more behind so cropped from left.
1DX II
560mm
1/1600
f/8
ISO 800

[Randy Stout]

Sanjeev"

Dynamic pose, good shooting angle, like the mud on bill, orange /red cap, soft background.

Light was quite harsh. I might consider cloning out the blob just in front of the bill.

Cheers

Randy

[Aditya Sridhar]

This isn't quite doing it for me, I'm afraid. Whilst I love the POV, feet and iridescence on the wings, the SS was just too slow to nail the action. The head isn't entirely sharp, the blurred wings are in a sort of in-between level of sharpness - not completely blurred but not sharp - and are quite distracting IMO. The background isn't entirely clean either and the many blobs draw my eye quite a bit.

I think upping the SS to 1/2500-3200s would've frozen the motion perfectly, and it appears that you had the light to do so. In terms of PP, lowering the contrast and clarity on the background, particularly the orange bit, will render it smoother and less distracting. I hope this helps. TFS Sanjeev

[John Mack]

The light was harsh but you handled it well. You must have been pretty close to get only the head and neck in focus. Background is nice.