Tree Swallow in flight

Welcome George,
Sweet first post. I like the take off pose you captured here and the BG is very nice. You do need more room in front however to not have that wing tip clipped and there will be additional advice coming about your posting size. Enjoy your experience with NPN and I look forward to seeing more of your work.

John,
Welcome to NPN. This is an interesting first post. If you post a larger image as well, it will make it easier to give you feedback. This shot seems a little soft to me, and if you had made a bigger crop with more room on the left, you would have given him room to "fly into" visually. Swallows are hard to photograph in flight and my success rate has been closed to zero. Keep posting and learning from others on the site.

It's a nice shot on a FAST bird. 1/640 sec? Must be a well done pan, too. I've been on this site for a couple of weeks, and I've learned a lot. (I think these folks realize that once you've come this far, you already have above average skills, and they're going to help you with the details). To a man (and woman), they know of what they speak. Well done.

Nice first post, John. Just getting one of these in the frame is an achievement. I have a ton of partial swallows to my discredit.I love the wing spread on the far wing. The image looks a bit soft. You don't mention your iso setting, but for flight shots on something this fast, I'd bump it up quite a ways to try to get that shutter speed up to around 1/2000 or so. With the 5Dii, you can crank the iso to 3200 without the noise becoming unmanageable. In fact, I was at a regional nature photography gathering a couple of months ago where one guy said he leaves his 5Diii at 3200 unless he's got too much light for it (not a practice I'd recommend).

You don't mention what software you're using, but they'll all let you resize your images to fit. Here's a link on an NPN resizing article http://www.naturephotographers.net/articles0509/dw0509-1.html

Thanks for joining us. I look forward to seeing more of your work and your comments on others work.

Let me add my welcome. It's a great first post and I really look forward to more. Remember to add you comments on others' photos. It's a terrific way to learn.

I can't offer much that hasn't already been mentioned, but in addition to posting your ISO, when you use a zoom tell us the lens setting. It helps us understand and evaluate the photo.