Incredible high key exposure. The half closed eye and ruffled wing show the mood you wanted. I'm left thinking though that landscape orientation would work better. More room in front of the bird to emphasize being alone, and lets the dominant horizontal lines in the BG flow. I've heard many times that be best time to take a horizontal shot is right after you've taken a vertical, or vice versa.
I agree with Alan on the crop. I would also crop the partial body reflection from the bottom.
Great job on the exposure and the pose with the raised wing is fanatstic.
I wish the head was seperated from the breaking wave.
Best wishes for the New year.
Peter
Yes, I think a horizontal crop would also be stronger here. One thing to watch in "wave" images is not to get the crest of the wave near the bird's head. Try getting it higher or lower so it doesn't intersect with the eye of the bird because then it tends to pull the viewer's attention away from the bird's face.
I love the processing here...you got a beautiful "feel" to the image and the DOF is perfect IMO. Lots to love about this image!
Thanks for the comments on this one. Will have a look through and see if I have a similar shot landscape. Unfortunately this was from a fixed hide for watchers not photographers so was too high to get the separation with the mud bank, no water here, it was frozen solid!
In future, will shoot both formats after each other, great piece of advice.
I would crop even tighter than Julie, I'm not shy about non-traditional dimensions. Here's my take. I also did some quick work with the patch tool to remove darker spots from the ice. I was sloppy along the top, especially around the head, just wanted to give an impression of what I think helps.
Julie, will have a go at cropping more of the reflection.
Alan. As a stand alone image, I quite like you long crop. But the main emotion i wanted to capture here was aloneness and cold bleakness, which I feel the long crop loses some what.
Stuart, I agree that my tight crop on the bird looses some of the emotion you want. I did it first to reduce the distraction of the angled mud bank. Maybe your #7 crop with some patching of the dark background would be the best. And Julie's idea of leaving more of the leg reflection might give back some of that isolation, but when I looked at it the dark stalk of the leg reflection bothered me.
Ice Queen
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