Flamingos in the Everglades

[Connie Mier]

Hi everyone, this photo was recently taken in the backcountry of the Everglades. Bug suit and all, I hung out with a flock of flamingos that were situated in very good light. I tried to isolate flock members and caught some group interactions like this one.
Sony a700, Minolta 300mm f4, 1.4X TC
1/640, f9, ISO400
Post processing, minor crop on left and right, some color saturation. I am reading the articles provided here on gaussian blur. I am thinking this would be an interesting touch with the tree background. Any ideas on that, as well as all other critiques are appreciated. Thank you
Connie

[Axel Hildebrandt]

I like the light, interaction and angle and would sharpen the birds a bit more. As for blurring, it might help although I don't find the BG too distracting. If you want to give it a try you can choose 2.0 pixels and see if it looks good.

[Stu Bowie]

Lovely interaction captured Connie, good light, showing the different colours on them. I also dont find the BG distracting, but I would maybe take a bit off the bottom.

[Ramon M. Casares]

I am not a fan of the BG, to bussy for my personal taste. Still, I like the interaction, poses, detail, light and colors.
Congratulations!

[Jorge Rodrigues]

Hi,

The interaction is very nice, maybe getting rid of the middle bird (the one with the shadow on the face) and throwing the background a bit OOF (or using -100 clarity on it if you have lightroom) would help the image. Thanks for sharing.

[Gal Shon]

Beautiful light with lovely interaction.
The green vegetation is actually contributing the image, it's the upper part (trees) that is a bit distracting.

[Fabs Forns]

Good for you getting the elusive Flamingos!!!

I like the interaction and the habitat included. Good job isolating the three.

Hope to meet you in the field sometime :)

[Daniel Cadieux]

I like the image as is (except for the shadow crossing the middle bird's head). I would not touch the lovely BG. Excellent interaction, and the light has a nice quality to it.

[Roger Clark]

Nice image. Here is what I would do to improve it in my opinion. I would select the shadow on the middle bird and lighten it so it was not as obvious. I would blur the background as I find it too busy. That will be difficult to make it look good. The lower background near the bank should be less blurred than further up, so a feathered selection would be needed.

Roger

[Connie Mier]

Thank you everyone. Here's a repost that includes some of the suggested changes. I sharpened the heads more. I cropped some of the bottom. I lightened the middle bird's head to minimize the shadow and slid the clarity to 100 on it (I am using LR). The vote to blur the tree bg seemed to be 50 50 among you, so I decided to not try to work with that yet. Since I am new to PS, I need some time for that step. Thanks again, you feedback is valuable. Fabs, hope to see you out there too!
Connie