Squabbling Skimmers

[Muhammad Arif]

While visiting family in NYC, I managed to squeeze out barely an hour to go to the beach and photograph the skimmers (and terns) late in the day. This is about a 50% crop of the original. After trying various positions of the birds in the frame and different crops, I decided to add canvas to the top to give more room in the direction of the birds' flight and turned the original 2:3 horizontal into an 8:10 vertical as nothing else seemed to work for a balanced composition. Post-processed in Photoshop for brightness, contrast, color, saturation and in DeNoise AI for noise reduction and sharpening.

Canon EOS R5
Canon 100-400mm II @400mm
1/3200 | f/5.6 | ISO 1600

Thanks for your feedback.

[arash_hazeghi]

the interaction element is nice here but the frame isn't quite there for me for several reasons: steep angle caused no visible eye contact. the birds are a bit too far and are looking away (as opposed to looking/angled towards each other) and the plumage isn't showing much details although the exposure looks good ...lots of blank space in the frame

Good thinking, now just have to work on execution

TFS

[Muhammad Arif]

the interaction element is nice here but the frame isn't quite there for me for several reasons: steep angle caused no visible eye contact. the birds are a bit too far and are looking away (as opposed to looking/angled towards each other) and the plumage isn't showing much details although the exposure looks good ...lots of blank space in the frame

Good thinking, now just have to work on execution

TFS

Thank you so much for your feedback. I learned a lot and now I have a much better understanding of what to look for in this type of image. Will go back to the proverbial drawing board.

[dankearl]

I agree with Arash on a lot of his critique, but it is a very nice effort and well done. If the IQ was there to crop tighter it would be nice....

[John Mack]

Sure does fit the theme. I don't mind the steep angle.

[Kurt Bowman]

I also agree with a lot of Arash's critique, but I am okay with he amount of empty space in the frame.

[Arthur Morris]

Since the the birds never fight on the ground, I do not mind the angle. :) I would take some off the right and more off the bottom to tighten things up. Great seeing you if only for a few minutes.

with love, artie

[Arthur Morris]

ps: and some off the top too. A square would work well here.

with love, a