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Nice shot Dan! I've never been able to capture this kind of action. elisabeth ;)

thanks elisabeth.

this is a slightly reworked version of a picture in my portfolio

before. please comment as to which is better.

 

comments and critique are welcome and appreciated, thanks.

here is the original: http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=5089799

In my opinion it is amazing you have caught this action. The positioning etc is an good improvement on the last version. I thought on first observation and looking at your other pictures that it was a bit of a dull day and hence the picture looked a bit flat. However looking closer there seem to be low light eluminating the bird and plenty of detail in the whites. I would try increasing the contrast a bit but hold back the legs and fish so they don't go too black. I think this would add more inpact to what is already a stricking picture. Anyway well done.

 

thank you very much for your comment, Robert. good call on the contrast boost, that does look a bit better. The only problem is that it gets a little bit darker when i do it and when i bumped up the brightness i got/get these weird horizontal lines accross the picture. perhaps they will be cleaned up when its saved though (as it appears a little bit here, but if you look closely they are there).

Great shot Dan. I love the way the light hits the side of the bird creating the shadow and the details of the wings. What shutter speed were you at on this photo? I think you said the apperture was F/4?

shot wide open at F4, speed 1/800 at iso 400.

 

thanks for the comment.

A really wonderful shot. I'd prefer stlghtly more Very cool!

punch to the pic, through perhaps photoshop. It's really an amazing capture and sure glad you were on you toes for that one!

it's almost 2 AM. Leave out the two words"very cool!" Have no idea why I'm trying to right at this hour! Very cool was meant for the closing comment!

hmmm, i keep getting these weird lines when i tweak it, though i wanted to go a little bit more (especially after robert's critique of a contrast bump, it looked a lot better except for the lines).

 

thanks for the comment.

Dan, straight contrast will darken it. You'll have better luck with Shadows/Highlights. Shadows at about 40%. Don't touch highlights. See attached.

very good, i like that a lot. there are so many controlls that i can only remember to play with a couple of them :).

 

thanks for the tip.

I know how you feel. There are about 7,832,437 things that my software can do. I've used about three dozen of them, and am competent using about 6 or 7.

Excellent capture, Dan. It's always great being in the right place at the right time. Of course then you have to be quick with your photo skills, such as you were here.

Thanks Scott.

Congrats

Thanks, Zacarias.