Spotless Crake

[Nevil Lazarus]

Like all Crakes, this is a very shy retiring little bird. A lot of patience near Newcastle, north of Sydney, a few years ago, gave me opportunities for some close up pictures.
1Dmk3 300 2.8 2x ISO400 1/1250 F8

[Randy Stout]

Nevil:

Excellent eye,detail in feathers, sharp.

The head is angled away a bit.

I might be tempted to crop down about 1/3 of the free space above. That negative space is so neutral that it doesn't add a lot to the image.

Thanks for sharing.

Randy

[denise ippolito]

Nevil, It's hard to give a critique after Randy, as he is so thorough. I agree w/ the head angle and crop. Beautiful looking bird and the feather detail is very nice.

[Stu Bowie]

Nevil, good job on the dark plumage, and love that red eye. Overall sharp, and waiting for him to turn more towards you would have been great. Still, well captured.

[Arthur Morris]

Sharp, good EXP, and a shy bird out in the open but lots of problems:

1-bird too centered.
2-iris is way over-saturated.
3-bird's head is turned away. With the bird angled towards you a bit the best HA would have resulted if the bird were looking straight ahead (with its head lined up with its body....)

[kenn threed]

Hi Nevil,

An interesting bird I've never seen. Nice sharp capture with good details.
I guess I agree about the too-centered crop, and maybe taking a bit more off the top is a good suggestion too. I don't know about the eye saturation because I've never seen one of these, but I find the catch light kind of oddly placed? Your exif doesn't state flash or not... but based on the shadows I'd expect this to show at the top of his eye rather than the bottom.

Kenn

[Gerard Satherley]

Wonderful capture Nevil. I can really appreciate the patience and skill required to get this bird in the open. I would move it more off centre and wish for a better head turn. Happy new year!