African Jacana
I know this is a rather unconventional composition...would love your honest feedback here?
Shot this from over the side of a small boat on a pond close to the Kruger Park. I was lying down in the boat to get as low as possible.
Techs:
Canon 7D with 100-400mm L IS USM @ 300mm
f5.6 @ 1/500 SS @ ISO-320
Last edited by Morkel Erasmus; 03-16-2011 at 06:08 PM.
beautiful bird, light, environment, colors. Unusual composition with the bird facing out of the frame, but I think it still works. I kind of wish the foot didn't have so much motion blur, but it does give a sense of movement as-is.
I like this a lot Morkel. I agree with Matthew that the composition is a bit inconventional, but there is a nice balance of elements across the horizon of the image. I especially like the localized punctuations of blue and violet colour on the bird's bill and the unopened flower. It is surprising to me at 1/500s that the foot wasn't sharper.
The light and pose are great. I like it better with the pads on the right cropped out. Keep the flower, crop at the left edge of the big slanting pad. The flower becomes the subject with those pads in, and the bird is walking away.
Wonderful image. I really like the reflection of the bird and flower. Great colors and I like the composition. To bad about the foot though. Well done.
Lovely, Morkel. I agree with Alan on crop
Cheers, Jay
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I wouldn't crop it at all.
I like habitat photos and I like the lilly pads.
The low angle is really good.
Nice work.
Morkel, when I first looked at the image on my laptop it presented as a panorama. Then I scrolled down to see the complete image. I like it as a panorama and I like it as is.
thanks for the comments folks...I wanted to keep the pads and lilies in precisely because it's such a nice show of the environment these waders move in.
A lovely photo and it shows off the bird in habitat very well.
Nice job on the colours as well. I find it tempting at times to bump the saturation in shots like this with lots of colours. this looks very natural and not overdone.
Photo does seem to provide some different crop possibilities, and I prefer this one. Although there are several elements it does not seem crowded and has a nice flow with bird as main eye catcher.
Dave
Morkel, loved the low angle, pose and reflection. Agree, its tricky to crop.
Beautiful image! Crop looks great to me. If anything it looks to me that the critical focus was't on the bird but on the plants so most of the bird looks oof to me.
thanks a lot Dave, Ofer and Kaustubh...
Ofer - I kind of agree...a little more DOF would have helped, should have stopped down to f8 here
Amazing scene and love the low angle. If I can add my 2 cents worth on the crop: I like the inclusion of all the elements here, but find the flower tip's reflection too close to the bottom edge. Where I normally like as much space above and below when it comes to beautiful reflections, in this case I would crop to just above the OOF green stuuf in LLC. This would effectively cut the flower, but IMO better than have it skimming the edge...this would give you a cleaner lower edge. Alternatively you could add a bit of canvas down there, if you have it.
All else looks great, wonderful BG, beautiful colours and I like the mid-stride pose.
Lovely image Morkel, crop works well as is but I also like Roy's suggestion of a pano crop.Jacana and habitat are perfect and could not be represented better, especially at that low angle.
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