In a week or two, this bird will live up to it's namesake. Photographed a few days ago at San Elijo Lagoon in San Diego County. I intentionally included the bleached sticks to balance the composition. I had to clone out several sticks (and their reflections) that were protruding from the water around the birds legs. I think the included sticks add interest to the composition without overly competing with the main attraction. I considered blurring the sticks somewhat to reduce the competition, but elected to leave them in focus. What do you think?
The bird is really nice, with lots of subtle shades, raised foot, nice angle in frame.
I appreciate the concept of balancing the bird with the sticks,but I think that the contrast of them is enough that they do really draw the eye away from the darker bird.
It is possible that eliminating the clump closest to the bird, and leaving the other sticks would work nicely.
The colors and the bird are killer. The image design is too boxy as Randy intimated; the stick are too close to the bird. A full 3X2 with the sticks well to the right would have been better. And better still had all the sticks been wet. But I am a blue water kind of guy.... A bit of selective sharpening of the face would not hurt this one.
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Well, it would be difficult to wet the sticks at this late date, but I did sharpen the head and clone out a bunch more sticks. Do you think this image is going the right direction, or do the remaining sticks look like an after thought? I could recrop to a portrait format an eliminate the sticks altoghether.
1-not enough space in front of the birds.
2-branches cut off by the right hand frame edge....
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With your excellent work on adding water I'd go for all water.
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Bill, lots of good advice above. Your PP skills look very good. Nice pose, colors and exposure. Agree with Artie that round of selective sharpening on the bird will improve this one a lot.
OK, this is the last hurrah! I've done a bit more sharpening and removed the twigs exiting stage right. This was a minimal crop and there was no extra space available in front of the bird (lower margin of frame). To invent the extra space in Photoshop is certainly doable, but I would rather go out and photograph more birds. I like the image as it is in this final repost and am not in favor of removing the sticks entirely. Thanks to all of you for the constructive advice. I have so much to learn.