landing

Antonello,

I like the dynamic landing pose, the spread of the wings and the flowing ocipital plume. I detect a thin halo around some parts of the heron, I would work on eliminating those. If you give us your complete techs including shutter speed, EV comp, crop percentage, ISO and aperture we can likely give you more informed critiques.

Welcome back

Antonello, I really like the light and the clarity of this picture. I love the spread wings, and I also love seeing the feet so clearly.

Beautifully captured Heron, very well done Antonello :^)

Although that tiny piece of leafy tree seen in the lower left-hand corner of the frame does offer a sense of proximity to where the subject was seen, if this were mine I think I'd probably remove it altogether, as my eye keeps being pulled away from the primary subject.

Thank you all for the comments!

@Ashley Vincent: that's exactly the point! I wanted to include a little branch to imply what
was coming next and where the heron was going to, but it can be distracting indeed... Maybe a
little more vegetation could serve the scope better, not just the little touch I included...

@Mia: Here are the data: Nikon D3X, 500/4 AF-S II, 1/2500, f/4.5, ISO 200, -0.7EV,
tripod... The original picture is horizontal and I cropped it to vertical, this gives a final
image of 2688x4032 pixels. I did lighten slightly the tip of the left wing in Capture NX2,
but I think the halo (visible especially in the small picture) is due to the Gibbs phenomenon
associated with jpeg compression... It is absent in the large raw file. It may be, however, that
the sky has slightly been lightened around the wing as a secondary effect of working
on the wing (I tried to avoid that but it's always difficult).

Thanks for looking !

Looks like I have company. This looks nice, especially the formation of the wings.

Really nice wingspread and I like the dangling legs you caught here Antonello. In general I like your compensation but I would prefer a little bit more vegetation than you currently have, perhaps you have some more on the left and can include a bit more on that side.