craig_bridge

Last time I checked, Snowy Egrets had yellow feet and black bills. This appears to be a Great American White Egret (or Great Egret). I'd do some cropping of the to get rid of the top of the frame.

Looks like there is some motion blur or jpeg compression blur. If you are going to take the time to tell us what lens you used, you might want to share the aperture and shutter speed (the D70 saves this for you) and it maybe useful in figuring out things like this blur.

Congratulations on finding a macro where out of focus background highlights actually work.

This doesn't look like any Juvinile Bald Eagle I've ever seen. Ones I've seen are all dark brown/black.

Unfortunately spoiled a bit by what appears to be some foreground tree leaves dangling in from the left edge.

He is looking left toward the closest edge with all this space to the right. This combination rarely produces the best composition.

My eye is led off to the right by the cloud and tree lines. Would be interesting to compare with a landscape composition with a wider angle lens.

There is no anchor (no foreground or background), just this middle ground hanging in mid frame.

What is the subject? If it is the foreground, it is out of focus or motion blurred or both. If it is the sky, you have a distracting foreground. If it is the 4 black specs (birds?) in the sky, they appear too small.

Looks like a Great Egret (white heron family) to me.

Nice composition.

Did I get one of these guys doing something interesting or is this

just another wierd portrait?

A haze filter might have helped. A ND grad would have helped if you alligned it to the first ridge. A Polarizer might have helped depending on the lighting angle. Waiting for beter lighting conditions definitely would help. Locking down on a tripod and taking several exposures and combining them in PhotoShop is a digital equivalent of the ND grad filter aproach with more flexibility.

The difference between the blown highlights in the clouds and the shadow details you lost in the trees are beyond what your camera sensor will render in a 24bit color space. Neutral gradient filters and polarizers are tools that may help to get it in one shot. Splicing two identical compositions at different exposures digitally is another tool.

You've blown out highlight details in many of the feathers. If your camera has a histogram that will show you a graph of the densities, make use of it to improve your exposures.

Lacks DOF. Straight down shots are rarely the best composition.

This looks like an old Ektachrome taken in the middle of the day that pales in comparison what it would look like on a more saturated Velvia film taken in better lighting. Film choices and looks are a personal thing. The D100 auto white balance "film" isn't often one to my liking. Photoshop is one way to alter it. Using other white balance settings and Kelvin offsets is another, but these take more experience.

Everything leads my eye to things this tree trunk on the left that is blocking the view. This one needed a chain saw or a different vantage point.

This is a fairly strong composition from a well chosen angle. Did you intend for the steeple to be leaning back and away? If not, it would take some form of perspective control to shift the lens with respect to the film/sensor which is beyond what your camera can accomplish.

My eye is lead to the single flower on the left which is unfortunately out of focus (behind the rear DOF plane).

Out of focus background highlights rarely produce a dramatic image.

The flash appears a little hot but maybe it was the scan where the highlights were blown out.

Without knowing the f-stop and shutter speed and if this was done on a tripod and how you down sampled and compressed the image, it is hard to know all the causes of the blur. Motion blur, insufficient DOF, and too much compression are probably bigger factors than the haze.

 

Photoshop selective color tool (decrease cyan, increase black) can be used to kill the haze if you have a decent image to start with.

It don't think it is the dark interior that bothers me. Not sure what all is involved but the perspective looks warped to me. The doorway crop creates a trapezoid that creates an optical illusion. The centerline of the gas pump and the door frame aren't parallel. You are probably too close, too low, and have the camera pointing up too much without any perspective control shift to avoid this. Not showing the right door jamb, the sky being tonally close to the barn highlights, and not showing any of the opposite roof pitch may all be contributing factors to the illusion.

 

 

This was done available light in broken shade on a windy day with BH-1/G1325 tripod flat on the ground laying down.