Ethel was Afraid of her Journey, Yet Oddly Captivated by the Road
by noraneko

Comment by lynnmarie:
Funny title; a bit more contrast would improve the details in the background.

Peacock Love
by noraneko

Comment by Melethia:
I'd never have known you tinted the background - it looks perfectly natural to me which means you did a great job not only applying a tint, but picking the right one. I'd never even have thought of that. To me, it's just a little soft - I'd normally suspect camera shake (that's my problem) but I see you're using an IS lens. May have been just a bit of movement by the birds themselves. But soft isn't always bad - often it's a matter of taste.

Peacock Love
by noraneko

Comment by levyj413:
Catherine, I think you did really well with the composition. The angles and colors are very nice. I agree with the score, though like Julianne, I'm having a little trouble figuring out exactly why. First, it could be sharper. It's a shot to be proud of, but to really pop, it needs sharpness. 1/50 was probably a little slow if they were moving, but I realize you were at dusk, so your options were limited, esp. as you were already at ISO 400. Try working with a wider aperture. I don't know how zoomed you were, but you might have been able to keep everything sharp even with a lower f-stop, which would've let you use a faster shutter.

Try this in processing: unsharp at 55, 1.4, 0. It seems to sharpen things up without too much haloing except under the male's neck. Since this is advanced editing, you can go in and erase that either by painting green or cloning a few pixels along that line.

I think you did a good thing making the background different from the tan, but maybe a reddish tint would've made the hen's top piece stand out more? Or make it darker.

One last suggestion: whens shooting, try different settings on multiple shots. Sometimes I'm surprised when I get home how much better an alternate setting works.

Ethel was Afraid of her Journey, Yet Oddly Captivated by the Road
by noraneko

Comment by Sapper13:
Interesting

Ethel was Afraid of her Journey, Yet Oddly Captivated by the Road
by noraneko

Comment by hanneke:
looks like your entry isn't very sharp, or a bit too much PP? I can't really tell. might be nice if the right track of the road was on the photo in whole.

Peacock Love
by noraneko

Comment by JuliBoc:
These birds are lovely and the pose is touching. The light is good. I gave it a 6, and I am trying to understand why it is lacking in impact. I think it is the green background. The peahen's colors are so soft that I think the green overpowers her. Also her topknot is not standing out well against the green. Really nice shot though.

Peacock Love
by noraneko

Comment by bmartuch:
Now that I go back and look at the details of the shot (should have done that first), I think that hand held at 1/50 may be what caused it to not be so vivid.

Peacock Love
by noraneko

Comment by bmartuch:
I think the subject and the compositon is really nice. I just think the colors need to be a little sharper. Nice shot.

Ethel was Afraid of her Journey, Yet Oddly Captivated by the Road
by noraneko

Comment by Blackbox:
Love the title...

White Spiral
by noraneko

Comment by bmartuch:
This was very nicely done. I like the way it fades off into oblivion in the upper left. This would have been a very nice diagonal shot also.