Female Martin Banking for a Turn.

Image Critiques Avian Critiques
1

PurpleMartininFlight.jpg
PurpleMartininFlight.jpg1600×2000 251 KB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

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Description

Martins, like other swallows, are rockets with feathers. For this photo, the lower wingtip was almost clipped from the bottom margin. So I added canvas , filled, and blended it in before cropping to 8x10. I like the feathers which have a slight blue tinge and it showed up well after processing.

Specific Feedback

I could have gone all high key, but decided to leave the OOF tree branches in the frame. Do you like the green in that part of the BG.?

Technical Details

Z9 600mm f4 + 1.4x TC (1/3200sec at f7.1, ISO 1250) Levels, Shadows & Highlights, Brightness & Contrast, canvas added to bottom and blended with a layers mask that was Gaussian blurred, crop for comp.

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2 Likes
2

HI Jim
The Martins coloring and feather detail are very nice. Keeping the tree, give the Martin a sense of space, that a high key would not. Nice work.
Peter

3

Beautiful, Jim, and about an 11 on degree of difficulty. We’ve had occupied gourds for eight or ten years now and I still haven’t managed a decent flight shot. The detail n this is superb and I love the banking pose. Definitely keep the tree in the background.

4

This is really an impressive capture. These birds move so fast that it’s hard to even visualize the species. I spent a day Trying to capture small birds and fight at 30 frames per second and came away empty-handed. Good work.

5

Hi Jim, really tough to catch these guys in flight. Terrific image with good details. Love the spread wing pose. The trees in the BG look good to me.

6

As others have said, swallows are tough to get in flight and to get one coming at you, eyes looking at you, with this great wing position is amazing. I always feel some environmental context in a flight shot beats a plain sky, so I’m glad you kept the tree. Great capture, Jim.

7

Incredible! I just awarded my first 12/10. I’m sure I could barely keep my eyes on one, and can’t imagine even trying with a camera. The banking pose is appropriately dynamic and the BG hint of a tree works very well. Superb!!