Cautious
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Comment by snaffles:
seein that it's hunting season now, don't blame him. Gorgeous buck, 7

Crossing the Erie
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Comment by giantmike:
Great scene and well composted. The colors look like they should have a bit more impact. As is, they feel a little bit flat.

Coming In For A Close Up
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Comment by spiritualspatula:
Hello from the Critique Club;

First I need to point out that I've never actually seen a whale in person, so that's pretty awesome that you've had a number of chances to catch pics like this. In your comments, you allude to the other whale photos you have entered and their placement. As a general comment, I think whales are creatures that are really hard to photograph, since you have very little chance to "direct" the photo, and you don't generally have all that many encounters with them. It doesn't help things, either, that when most of us see a whale, it's an amazing National Geographic shot, so the bar is set pretty high.
Regarding this particular shot though, I'd say that you've nicely capture a whale as it comes up for air. It isn't as much of an action shot as "The Grace of The Dive" or "Dive-Dive-Dive," so I imagine that's part of why it scored where it did. Free Studies just demand superb photos that are also of "WOW" moments, and this one isn't as WOW as National Geographic shots. This is an interesting composition though, and I like how the whale's head is just pushing into the frame towards the viewer. I also like the effect of the water ripples distorting our view of its head. Personally, I don't see much of anything wrong with this shot, so I think you did a great job with things.

Crossing the Erie
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Comment by william88:
Great shot! great timing!

Thanksgiving's Coming - We Are So Outta Here!
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Comment by Luci11e:
GREETINGS FROM THE CRITIQUE CLUB

First Impressions:
captured nice color here on the turkeys heads

Technical (Comp, lighting, color, focus):
Your compostion is fine but seems to me the background is very busy. I realize it's a wildlife shot and you can't really set it up, but blurring your background some may have helped with this. Also, as mentioned below getting rid of the road would be very benifical to this shot.

Challenge:
Your shot meets the challenge very well.

Artistic/Emotion:
Not sure this is a great artistic shot, looks more like good luck and as you mentioned in your notes you came over the rise and there they were. Frankly I'm surprised they didn't run away from you!
Your title is the emotional kicker on this one.

Summary:
You lucked up and got a nice shot of turkeys! :-) BTW, I'm not knocking "luck" in anyway - I'm quite a fan of Lady Luck myself.

EDITED TO ADD THAT THIS IS FROM THE CRITIQUE CLUB

Message edited by author 2010-10-11 12:51:30.

Nuts for Brunch
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Comment by tome:
Their favorite meal :). Beautiful closeup.

Nuts for Brunch
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Comment by lawrysimm:
I'm a bit of a sucker for bird photos, but I feel that this only briefly holds my interest. The reason I think, is that it seems to be a massive cropof an image where the bird is only a small part of a larger image. I'm led to this belief because of the apparent lack of resolution/clarity and a great deal of noise. This shot might fare better in a nasic challenge, but when it's up against people using advanced editing techniques, I think that this image would need degrees of noise reduction and sharpening in order to compete. On the up side, I do like the contrast between the defocussed yellow background and the bird, and the capture of it having the nut in it's beak is spot on. It would be interesting to see the original of this to see how much is cropped. I may be way off.

Nuts for Brunch
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Comment by Jon_H:
Great shot, it just appears a tad on the noisy side.

Thanksgiving's Coming - We Are So Outta Here!
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Comment by jayzundel:
get rid of the road. nice birds and colors

Nuts for Brunch
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Comment by kellmak10:
a little grainy, but very cool that you caught the moment with the nut in it's mouth