One of the highlights of my trip to the island of Fuerteventura was seeing the Houbara Bustard. As many species of the desert, the blend in very well and it takes a while to find them.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
The image is taken from the car, which gave me a higher angle than I normally would choose, but still I am pleased how the bird stands out.
Technical Details
Nikon Z9 with 500mm prime + TC @ 700mm | 1/1600s | f6.3 | ISO1600 | underexposed 1/3EV | from car window
Wow, that is a really different looking bird. Beautiful environment as well. Really nice head turn and sharp details. If you have it, I’d wish for a little bit more room up top but understand if there is a distraction there. Great capture, Hans.
Hi Hans
You are correct, about this Houbara Bustard ability to blent into the ground cover. This is a great low angle and the ground colors helped to frame the Houbara Bustard. You did a nice job on the exposure and feeder detail and I love the head turn.
Peter
While it isn’t as low as most of your other bird work, it certainly is engaging and well framed/composed. I can see how difficult they would be to spot until one moved, and even then it would be hard to track them. The soft light and palette works really well to illustrate the rather sere environment. It seems a tad over-sharpened on my laptop, but it could be that the display is just different than yours. The walking pose and the fact that it looks to be searching for something adds to the idea that the bird is busy and can’t be bothered with us humans.
Thanks for your reaction ! @Kristen: thanks for your comments, as to the sharpening I didn’t extra sharpen it, and on my screen (27") it looks good, there’s however quite some contrast in its feather pattern, maybe on other screen that looks over sharpened? Thanks anyway, Hans
