Headed Home From Katmai

[Arthur Morris]

I am sitting in the Anchorage airport waiting to catch a red-eye flight to Minneapolis and then continiuing on to Orlando. We had a great trip with the bears but not many birds aside from the Mew Gulls in the creeks with the bears and the salmon.

This blasting sillhouette of a group of Pelagic Cormorants was created with the Canon 400mm f/4 IS DO lens handheld. ISO 200. Evaluative metering -1 1/3 stops: 1/1250 at f/16.

This was a fairly large crop. Lots of Photoshop work was done to blacken all of the silhouetted rocks and lots more on the two birds set against the water. (These were very brightly backlit.)

Don't be shy; all comments welcome.

ps: Do check out today's Blog post here: www.BIRDSASART-Blog.com for the whole story and three more interesting images. In addition, I will be posting some bears from the trip in Wildlife and in Friends and Family.

[Aidan Briggs]

Lovely. Great silhouette, muted colors, and graduated BG. The lowest bird with its wings spread really balance the comp. I can't think of anything to improve here.

[Tony Whitehead]

Well spotted and well executed. Pano crop works really well and I like the depth created by the aerial perspective.

[Ilija Dukovski]

I like the fact that you have 4 clean grades of brightness. Great composition, what is best about the image
are evenly spaced birds on the very horizon. The leftmost bird makes the image for me, though.
Not only it has its wings spread, but also is in contact with the friend on the right to tell his story to: "The fish was this big...":) My attention went there first thing after I opened the post.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Artie, I Like the layers within the image and the silouettes.IMO the image would be strengthened by cropping about 40% of the upper grey sky...

[Arthur Morris]

Tony, The "aerial perspective" was created from the deck of our vessel a retired fishing boat

Dave, Thanks for the crop suggestion.

[Arthur Morris]

ps: Here is the ORIG after coming out of ACR. I had forgotten that I made a QM of the right wing of the left-most bird (which was facing away) and then warped it to mimic the shape of that bird's left wing.

[Tony Whitehead]

[QUOTE=Arthur Morris;340772]Tony, The "aerial perspective" was created from the deck of our vessel a retired fishing boat

[QUOTE]

"aerial perspective" doesn't reflect the shooting position, I realised you were on a boat from the title - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_perspective for the definition of the term. Is is a bit confusing and I guess atmospheric perpspective may be less so but aerial is what my father taught me:D

[Kiran Poonacha]

Not that pro to continue on the thread.

just wanted to say, loved the setting here, good feel to this, the shimmering water inbetween adds greatly to this.. congrats guru..

[Raymond Barlow]

Wonderful image Artie, I think something closer to the original might tell the story even better.

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Pretty cool light and the cormorants add to it. Does it need a tad CW rotation?

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks all for the comments and suggestions, and thanks Tony for the explanation. The influence of our Dad's can be ever-lasting. Ax, I am pretty sure that I leveled this off the bottom of the mountains on the left but it could be off a bit.

[Arthur Morris]

ps to Tony: thanks for the interesting link.

[Doug Brown]

This one really works for me Artie. I like the location of the FG rocks relative to the BG mountains and the placement of the birds on the rocks. The water looks dazzling and really helps accentuate the blackness of the silhouette.

[Juan Carlos Vindas]

Very nice image. Love the combination of colors here, these four simple colors gives a mood of loneliness to the image. Loneliness, even though there are several birds in the frame. To me that's photography, what the photographers sees but the others interpret.
I believe that the crop suggestion on top would really improve this great picture, nice PS work.