Half of a Pair of Trumpeter Swans and Its Brood, Lincoln Park Zoo, Chicago
Trumpeter swans, natives of North America, are an endangered species but are coming back because of successful breeding and release programs. These swans are models of fidelity - they are monogamous and mate for life!
Tech: contrast masking, autolevels, contrast/brightness, cloning out a blade of grass, saturation, resizing, unsharp mask.
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Place: 31 out of 205 Avg (all users): 6.2108 Avg (commenters): 7.3000 Avg (participants): 5.9310 Avg (non-participants): 6.6812 Views since voting: 1017 Votes: 185 Comments: 11 Favorites: 0
This is a nice shot, you've captured a nice moment of these three ducklings.
Swans are always very tricky subjects to expose for, highlight detail is the thing to aim for, while keeping detail in the beak and here the highlights are overexposed. It's a shame you couldn't get a light area behind the swan's beak so we could see it's face better.
I'm not convinced by the centered composition... everything needs to be higher or lower in the frame. The middle just doesn't work for me. Also, other points of interest such as the swan's face and the duckling on the right are far too near the edge of the frame.
The textures, colours and shapes in the water are lovely, I think you could have made more of this.
In conclusion, a wonderfully timed shot that captured a nice 'family' moment, but more thought needs to be put into composition.
What makes this a notch above run-of-the-mill is not just the beautiful exposure and detail on the birds feathers (particulalry the cygnets downiness) but the wonderful attitude the cygnet that is off on its own is displaying. He's the bad boy of the trio. Just look how well behaved the other two are being! Really cute in a natural way.
GORGEOUS photo!! great colours, exquisite detail, beautiful composition.. the only suggestion i can make is to either cut off the top part of the photo where the water turns greener, to keep the photo consistent, or to recompose the photo with the birds at the very bottom and nothing but water above them, just to make it a bit more unusual
Very good shot- one of the better entries. Looks like you had to zoom/crop quite a bit. Considering the generally dull colors, this might have been a good candidate for B&W, sepia or similar colorization.
Sweet shot - swans are so lovely. I like the reflected colors in the water. I wish the cignets had posed a bit less radomly for you, but what can you do!
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