Greater Flamingo

[Mital Patel]

Please do critique on the image.

Name : Greater Flamingo
Scientific Name : Phoenicopterus ruber
Location : Thol Bird Sanctuary ( Mehsana, Gujarat, INDIA)
Photograph Date : 18th April 2009

Equipment : Nikon D300, Nikkor 80-400D ED VR f4.5/5.6
Exposure : 1/1600 sec at f/8.0
ISO : 400

[Bibhav Behera]

lovely symmetry. Good capture at the exact moment. I like the angle also... I would increase the image brightness a bit...

[Mrudul Godbole]

Hi Mital,

Liked the compostion and the low angle. The reflection adds to the composition. I have worked on the image a bit, by increasing the brightness and the contrast.Attaching the shot, please suggest..

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Mital,

Borders look good in prints. However, it hinders in critiquing as it becomes difficult to know the actual tones.

In your image, the beak of the flamingoes are too dark and have lost details. The overall image is darker and needs about a stop extra exposure.

The legs of the flamingoes are too red. It happens when you aggressively pull up the black point and also when you oversaturate.

Ok. Now the good points.

I like the composition. You have captured a nice syncronised pose and it immediately evokes a very positive feeling in the viewer. The image is sharp and depth of field appears to be adequate.

The horizon line appears to cut its leg. It could have been avoided if you could have got a further lower angle. I am not sure if it is possible or not. It might have required to get into water, not always possible without risking skin problems and without scaring the birds. For eg. in Pulicat Lake, the fishermen told us that we will immediately get skin problems if we touch the water. We are trying to visualise and give suggestions to strengthen the image, and at times some of the suggestions may not be implementable. So don't get unduly hassled or irritated by it. :D

Overall, a nice image that requires a different post processing.

Thanks for sharing.

Mrudul: The repost is in the right direction. I would tend to lower the brightness a little bit. It is not possible to recover the blacks from the jpeg.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mital Patel]

dear mrudul and sabhyasachi,

I am really impressed with the fact i have read here and seen here. To be very frenk i never thought of these points while processing. i must see my other images of flamingos shot same day and re process them.

thanks a lot for kind guidance.

[AB Apana]

Great image! Agree with the repost

Apana

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

beautiful angle and capture. original img too dark though, the edited one by mrudul looks perfect.