Anhinga portrait

Last Friday I had the pleasure of spending the day shooting with Alfred and Fabs Forms at the Wakodahatchee Wetlands in West Palm Beach, Fl. If you want to learn a great deal and have a lot of fun doing it, these are the people to go out with. Knowledgeable and professional while retaining a wonderful sense of humor are their byword. Criticism is given in a manner that is to the point but not devastating in any way. Thank you Alfred and Fabs for a really great day of shooting and instruction. This image was taken in the early morning and I am very pleased with the result. Nikon D3, 200-400mm lens w/1.4 extender, 1/250sec f/5’6, Manual mode, 3-D meter, ISO-200. Any comments or criticism welcome.

Great pose and BG. I might remove the feather (?) at the tip of the upper mandible.

I might remove the feather (?) at the tip of the upper mandible.

Click to expand...

Axel, I ponder as to why we are prone to disfigure a beautiful image by unnecessarily adjusting it to reassemble a painting, whereas we should be "in my opinion" showing the world what we see.

I am having a problem here with the "artistic" against the "realistic" portrayal of our wildlife.

Am I on the wrong forum?

First of all, great capture. Beautiful.

Regarding Axel's suggestion of removal of the feather from the beak, I look forward to more discussion on this here, or elsewhere in the forum.

While I agree that it is a minor distraction from an otherwise beautiful image and personally would have no issue in removing it, it does raise the question of ethics and limits. Is there any accepted "standard" these days as to what is deemed "acceptable" in terms of retouching/editing/removal of or adding to an image?

Obviously some contests set their own standards, but outside of that are their any standards of practice at all when submitting images for publication?

I will open a thread in Photography Topics about tis discussions.

Mac, thank you for your kind words. We love to teach!

Christopher C.M. Cooke said:

Axel, I ponder as to why we are prone to disfigure a beautiful image by unnecessarily adjusting it to reassemble a painting, whereas we should be "in my opinion" showing the world what we see.

I am having a problem here with the "artistic" against the "realistic" portrayal of our wildlife.

Am I on the wrong forum?

Click to expand...

I'd remove the bit of feather as well. I'd also remove the dust spot in the upper left hand corner. (or should be keep the dust spot? ) I like the action that you captured and you have a very nice background.

Personally, the photo here rocks! I won't divert the attention this photo deserves by getting into a debate about the ethics of cloning and such. i will post my thoughts in the thread Fabs started, after I have worked out how to do so without making a big issue of it. That topic is a fire starter for sure.

Excellent image created here!

lovely exposure. a little more of DOF would have kept the whole beak sharp ifeel.
& with regards to the feather, i wud have perhaps not removed it...

rgds,
Kaushik