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People who take risks have to be prepared to get hurt. Ouch!
Since I didn't get a good in-flight shot or interaction shot, I thought I would go with the interesting breeding color and plumage.
The Great Blue herons develop very blue faces (including eyelids) and some of the feathers get very long. I selected this shot because I liked the eyes, long dark blue topknot and the fanned out feathers of the head and neck.
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Place: 188 out of 218 Avg (all users): 4.9425 Avg (commenters): 5.2000 Avg (participants): 4.8542 Avg (non-participants): 5.0077 Views since voting: 742 Views during voting: 342 Votes: 226 Comments: 9 Favorites: 0
Julianne, This has really good DOF and very well composed. The only thing that I'm not sure of is the background. The colors just seem a little washed out. I'm not sure why. It's still a nice shot. I gave it a 6.
The pose here is certainly different to the usual, so you're going for out of the box territory, but it's difficult for my eyes to find a resting point on the image, because I'm expecting to see a different angle of the bird.
I gave this a 6. It took a good staring to figure out what was going on here, but even before I did, I found the abstract qualities very pleasing. I love his big black feather and the colorful mottle of bokeh. Once you find his face he is absolutely adorable. Like a true team sucker, you are guilty of posting a shot that is too interesting for the four second crowd. Technically, I think your focus is great, your composition puts his wee closed eye near a third intersection and his neck starts the swirl of golden mean. The only thing I might have done differently would be to saturate the bird's blue selectively, so that the sky didn't compete and you don't get blues seeping in indiscriminately. This really deserved to score higher.
There's a really cool thing I don't know if you noticed - the curl of the dark headfeather thingie is echoed by little blue dots of sky in the background. A good shot, and a different perspective on one of these guys.
The moment you capture just isn't interesting if I am to be honest. I do like the blurring of the background to make the bird stand out and you've moved him off center. The thing is you need to show something compelling. Since the bird's face was hidden maybe you should have taken the opportunity to explore it's shape more and us the lines from those shapes to form an interesting composition. That strand of hair right at the top looks like a good starting point for perhaps a leading line in a portrait orientated shot. Just a suggestion.
ETA: An example I saw in this challenge is "Sea Of Feathers". If you look at that shot it's got a rather interesting diagonal composition going where the bird's shape has been framed in a very pleasing fashion. That's the sort of thing I'm talking about here.
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