I am working on a book entitled Jewels of the Willamette: the Willamette Valley National Wildlife Refuge Complex. This is my favorite photo so far from that project. I am currently considering this for the cover, both because of the aesthetics and the fact that the Dusky Canada Goose, as in this photo was the original reason for establishing the WVNWRC. What do you think? Image is currently not cropped and no post work other than the normal RAW conversion things in Lightroom. EOS 1D MkIII, 400mm f/2.8 LII + 2X, iso 1000, 1/250 at f/8.0
Hi Rick. Love the lighting here and I think the blurred wings on the geese would make an ideal cover image. I think you should crop from the right to eliminate the other bird, which would still retain good, if not better composition - yes, in the middle, but as the cover of a book I think it would be best like this. I think you should straighten the horizon and possibly get rid of the unnecessary space around the bottom by another crop.
I tried my hand demonstrating this manually for a change, so here is an example of what I'm thinking. I have straightened and cropped as per my comments above.
Hi Rick, I like the sweet light and the compostion as cropped, but we did promise to be honest so here goes. The image is nowhere near sharp. The o-o-f geese at the bottom of the frame are distracting, and with the near-bird's head in the dark shadow on the rear bird, this image simply does not work for me as a cover or otherwise.
Later and love, artie
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