still sorting thru pictures from the flight workshop last spring with Doug Brown and Jim Neiger. pretty happy with several skimmer pictures - looking at this one, i found myself thinking that the main point of interest of this picture was that alien bird staring you in the eye, and those drops falling off its long bill..... and those got lost when i fit the whole bird in the picture.
so I just was curious if this crop interests people or fails... I thought it had a rather surreal affect that I liked
Wish I had had more depth of field.
nikon d300, 300.mm f/2.8 with tc, 1/1250 sec at f/7.1, iso 400 manual
cropped, recover, clarity and vibrance applied in LR and a little curves to lighten the black
NR and selective sharpening in PS, with S/H applied to the white face
appreciate any comments or suggestions to improve!
Wow, very nice. I do like the crop, although I haven't seen the previous version. What makes it for me is the very sharp beak/head and water droplets, and the position of the bird. Like someone else said, perhaps a slight lightening of the outer rim of the eyes might make it more effective. It seems like you've done a good job in post.
Kevin
Pat, I totally think it works! You might even experiment with just a little more clockwise rotation and see if you can't get that left wing further into the corner so the bird looks like he's coming at us at an even steeper image.
Great exposure! Man, those water drops are killer!!!
just for fun - does this crop work? skimmer
