[Recovered Thread: 80340]

[Tom Overton]

This is a beautiful shot, and would look great just about any way you crop it. Focus issues aside, the extreme crop is a dynamite composition - too bad this compromise requires cropping the great details in the beak of the right-hand bird.

Great work!

Tom, on Point Pelee, Canada
http://tomoverton.myphotoalbum.com


By the way, many things can be fixed on the computer, but to have the shot come out of the camera as it did is a testament to good technique (and probably a lot of patience on your part)

[peripatetic]

Thanks everyone.

By the way, many things can be fixed on the computer, but to have the shot come out of the camera as it did is a testament to good technique (and probably a lot of patience on your part)

Or blind luck and filling up a CF card with lots of shots. :blah:

I think in the end I will probably try a print of the very tight crop, because I think it has a degree of originality.

I have a bit of a problem with "wildlife" and "pet" photographs in general, which mirrors my issues with "sunset" pictures. It's not that it's impossible to get a decent shot, but rather that it's really really hard to do something original.

As Michael Reichmann says in a recent interview "I'm not sure the world needs another photograph of a lion." That's basically how I feel about animals and sunsets, and please I mean no disrespect to many of the fine sunset photographs posted here. But I do think that if you're going to do one you need to raise the bar a bit. A good landscape photograph is often taken at sunset, but it's not taken OF the sunset if you see my point.

I recently went on some game drives over a long weekend, took loads and loads of photos, apart from the family shots, you know what the only 2 I liked were? Thor and White Mischief which I posted here. I have maybe 300 shots of all kind of birds and animals and my reaction to them was that I would hate to have to sit through a slideshow. Only one stood out and that's because it looks like a two-headed giraffe, not because it was a good picture.

Thanks again for taking the time.

Craig.

P.S. For those living in Jozi, this was taken at the Monte Casino Bird Park, which is a great way to spend a few hours with the family and a fun opportunity to take a ton of photos.

[David French]

Here's my take on it. I think the bird with its head sideways creates a stong direction to the right, anchored by the vertical line that the other bird creates. Negative space on the right side gives the direced energy somewhere to go.

Great shot. What color!

[Corpsy]

It's a very nice photo. Peripatetic, I like your closeup crop except that you need to show the beak of the second bird.

[E.S. Crawford]

i'm mesmerized, shallow dof or no!


scot

[In search of Syd]

I'm just jealous I didn't take a shot like this!