I love the look of surprise on the fish, and it looks like the water drops have come out of its mouth! Excellent action captured. Awesome texture to the water. I agree the Anhinga looks oversharpened. Perhaps bringing out the iris a bit more would work well.
Thank you very much for all the comments on this one and all are greatly appreciated. This is my first post here. On my monitor(I use a frequently calibrated CRT monitor for processing my images. I do not like the laptop screens or the new flat panel monitors)and the sharpening of the image looks fine. I will surely check it again. I always make sure the eye of the bird is in focus when shooting, as the eye with catchlight is the life of any bird or people photographs and true for this picture also. Shooting at F5.6 on this one, with lens pointing slightly downwards and main focus being on the birds eye, certain elemnts of the photograph are going to be a little out of focus(as the whole image is not parallel to the sensor and I am shooting 5.6). When I sharpened, it appears Anhinga is oversharpened. This is what I think might be going on.
Thanks again
Manjesh
Last edited by Manjesh Lingamurthy; 02-11-2010 at 10:33 AM.
I love the image. I've taken many photos of anhingas and often struggle with the appearance of the wet feathers. They have a tendency to look oversharpened with an amount of sharpening that would be normal for the rest of the photo and that may be what is going on here. The "expression" of the fish and the water drops are wonderful. I also am impressed by the size of the fish this anhinga proposes to swallow.
So great to see you posting here Manjesh and what a wonderful first post it is. Excellent composition with wonderful timing and action. You did well to capture both eyes and the drops of water falling from the fishes mouth puts it over the top for me. Well done and many thanks for sharing. will look forward to your future posts.