Help me Edit my Gull Images

[glenerrolrd]

The season is almost over in Florida. Soon it will be blistering hot and humid in Jupiter. I try to shoot everyday at the Pier for about 6-8 weeks and I have probably 3000 images.

The following three images are one of my buddies....he is there everyday ....waiting..just waiting for a piece of fish! I was testing the Leica 500mm mirror on the D3 ..how would it perform up close? You can see that my buddy is quite angry with me ...I have invaded his "space" . Any closer and he will try to bite the lens.

Three alternatives ..help me pick one or reject them all. But most important tell me what you see and why you liked or did t like them.

They shifted toward magenta when uploaded ..I will of course fix that later .

 

[Mark Gowin]

Roger,

I would reject the 2nd photo since it is so similar to the 1st. I like the 1st better than 2nd because it doesn't show the little tuft of brown near the top of the head and the neck is not as contorted.

All 3 images show some sort of anomaly or sensor dust that looks like a short smudge and a few small dots located in the right-hand side of the frame near the bottom third line and another spot just above that area. These can easily be cloned out.

The 3rd image is my favorite of the set. The colors look great and I like the little bit of back light on the dark brown feathers on the neck.

Mark

 

[Terry]

On the first two while I like the eyes, it feel like you cropped the shot to show us something specific and I look at the shot and want to see more. On the third one you lose the eye contact but the picture feels more "whole" to me.

 

[glenerrolrd]

The smudges are the out of focus wood planks on the pier(except for one that maybe dust). The cropping was simply a test of the close focusing capability of the lens as I have probably 100 images of this pelican . But after I looked at the images while editing ....I thought I would get input on a common theme.

IMHO the 3rd picture has a cleaner look with better composition but its pretty boring ? This is maybe the dreaded "nice rendering" but nothing special . The 1st picture also has decent composition and rendering . But ..the 2nd picture has the "eyes" that show the Pelican is angry. He isn t afraid ..he wants me to get out of his face. The composition fights with the image ...he is looking a light left and yet there is a lot of space to the right.

None of these make it to the next round.....but I thought it was interesting to contrast the three images and see what others picked up on. Would like more input if anyone cares to comment.

 

[Lars]

#1 is more personal, something about both eyes visible.
#3 is the graphically strongest but not as much alive.
Maybe a square crop would work on both images the negative space along the sides adds little to the composition in this case.