Please share your first response before reading the hidden notes below. The photographer is looking for an unbiased initial impression.
First post. Not sure what goes where.
HI Richard, welcome to NPN! It’s always nice to catch a symmetrical flight reflection like this with such a great downward wing position. One of the wings is even touching the water. As for composition, I’d say put more room in front of the bird than there is behind it. I’d like to see the bird more to the left overall in the frame so he/she has more room to fly into. The exposure looks a little bright to me with some areas appearing blown out. I use highlight alert notifications or “blinkies” to dial in settings to control the whites but that can be difficult for sudden opportunities. Another point is the bird is angled away from us as it is flying. Tough to catch but an angle toward us or parallel is optimal. Still, this is an intriguing image. Thank you for sharing!
Hi Richard & welcome to NPN. We have a very active avian photography section so I’m sure you’ll find a lot of enviable subjects and expertise to study. So glad you jumped in with this eye-catching shot. The reflection and symmetry are killer.
Allen’s observations & suggestions are spot on, especially when a bird is facing away from the viewer. It limits engagement and a space for the bird to move into in our imaginations helps bring some of that back.
Insofar as the submission form goes, a lot of it is clickable and will populate things for you to help get your ideas across and articulate what kind of help you’d like to get from the community. Most importantly, it can be saved as a draft that you can return to and change if it isn’t on target. Play around with it and see what you think. It’s been well-received because it allows for so much specificity. Feel free to ask any questions you might have by opening a discussion or PM any of the moderators. We’re here to help and again, welcome aboard. This is a great place to learn and grow your craft.
Hi and welcome Richard.
I agree with both Allen and Kristen regarding your image. I don’t know how good your processing skills are; but there could be some things you could do to improve this shot. So, give it a try by decreasing the brightness and slightly increasing the contrast. That would be a good start..
Hi Richard, Welcome to NPN and the bird gang. The graphic nature of the egret and it’s reflection are outstanding in this image. As others have mentioned, the image appears overexposed and it becomes difficult to tell whether the focus is proper because of that.
You don’t mention your experience level, so I’ll ask if you’re saving your images in the camera as jpeg or raw files. If you’re not saving them as raw files, I would strongly recommend doing so as it allows a lot more leeway for recovery of over or underexposed images and some of the better noise reduction packages require a raw file to work on. They do take up a lot more memory and I used to say memory was cheap, but with the AI folks hogging it all it’s gone up in price significantly.
I also strongly recommend that you get into the habit right away of looking at other people’s images and the critiques written on them and that you critique as many images ass you can find time for. If you’re not experienced at it, just look at the image and try to define what ti is about it that appeals to you and what you find distracting. That makes a good start. In my experience, critiquing other’s images is the single best way to improve your own photography.
You obviously have a good eye and I’m really looking forward to seeing more of your work.
Hi Richard! Welcome to the NPN Community! I really like this image. The ‘full circle’ created by the nice reflection works really well. I agree with Allen and Kris’s comments about the composition and the exposure, but for the exposure, if you use Lightroom for your processing, you might try changing the profile. I discovered a few years ago after photographing a couple white swans, that the default Adobe Color profile caused the birds to be over exposed. I knew the raw file was not over exposed, so changing to a profile that adds less contrast eliminated that problem. In my case I used a linear profile, but you could also try Adobe Neutral.
Again, welcome to NPN!
Welcome, Richard! And this is a very nice first post. Although the flying away pose is not often the most engaging, in this case the lovely reflection more than makes up for it! But good advice above. Have a go at what might work and everyone would love to see a repost. There is a button at the top of your original post to make that easy.
If you could add a bit about equipment and processing (including software used) that will give people some perspective for suggestions. (You can edit your post by clicking the pencil icon in the lower right to add things.)
HI @richard10! I rarely comment on images in the birds category as I don’t know much about birds or how to photograph them. But this, this is a wonderfully graphic, the title is well chosen, and the circle formed by the drooping wings and upturned reflection feels like magical, perfect timing.
Welcome, and nicely done!
ML
