I was out on our local lake this morning in my continuing effort to get some shots of the recently fledged juvenile which I saw but it never presented itself in a good pose but I did manage a shot of one of its parents while I was at it. D500, Nikon 200-500 lens, Nikon 1.4 TC, 13200th, f 8.0, 700mm, ISO 1100, hand held, AI Clear, cropped to 3377 x 2500.
Hi Dave, I like the pose you captured here - a nice, backwards look towards us. Composition looks good to me also. The light seems harsh - I could see toning down the whites some more. The lower dark feathers seem to lack detail - wondering if this was a sizable crop or if noise reduction was run over the bird.
Agree with Allen’s comments. Nice look-back pose and perch. But the sun wasn’t really your friend at this time of day, perch is a bit steep, and detail could be a little better.
I echo what the others have said but you do have a really nice head turn and relatively sharp eyes. It does look like maybe this was cropped pretty heavily. Would really like to see more of the feet too.
The slightly harsh light doesn’t bother me too much, Dave, but to my eye there seems to be a bit of blue color cast(the needles don’t look quite right and I can see a bit of it in the head). For me, this pose can be very effective, but the steep angle compresses the bird and makes it look rather dumpy to me.
