Courtship Flight

[Chris Knight]

Northern Pintails in courtship flight Llano Seco NWR 1/2500 f4 ISO200 D300 w 200mm f2 2x TC

[Doug Brown]

I like the behavior captured Chris. Birds are sharp for the most part, not easy when there are 4 of them. My problem with the image is that there's no bird that anchors the image visually; I'm not sure where to look. Most of my attention goes to the pair on the left; I almost think this would be a better image if you removed the birds on the right and recropped for the new composition. I also think that you can go a little brighter and bring up the shadows a bit.

[arash_hazeghi]

great critique by Doug, images like these are tough since the birds usually merge and often they don't all have a good wing position and are not on the same focus plane

[Blake Cook]

I'm not sure what happened in PP but the birds look pasted onto the sky. Too much NR perhaps??

[Chris Knight]

Here is a redit bringing up exposure and shadow. There is no noise reduction other than in camera. I did think about removing some canvas between the 2 groups to keep them all together for the theme of the shot. thank you for the feedback