I've got a set of nature photos (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tommose/sets/72157622622936126/detail/), and would appreciate any critiques. I'm really interested in a critique of htis one.

Too centered...I'd crop off the left 20% leaving him flying into the frame, Tom.

On a lousy monitor currently, but it looks like you did an excellent job preserving the detail in the whites. Could be a bit sharper. Tom points out an excellent rule of thumb for BIF: have the bird flying into the frame, eg into more space. Go less centered.
Quick look at your gallery.
Nice variety, excellent job on the whistling duck. Watch for going too centered for most images. If you are catching reflections, try to get the whole reflection in. I tend to go more centered, symmetrical with reflection images of a static subject, but vary things around. Check out shadow/highlight recovery to see if images can be optimized.
For fantastic bird images, check out the Nature forum here, esp folks like Jody Melanson, Imagemaster, Migara (and a zillion others) and www.birdphotographer.net. Also, if you are into this bird thing and havent done it yet, consdier getting Artie Morris' The Art of Bird Photography II on CD.

And keep posting here for more specific advice on individual images.
Scott

trenchmonkey wrote:
Too centered...I'd crop off the left 20% leaving him flying into the frame, Tom.
The only problem I had with the crop is that there was a partial bird in the frame to the right and below this fella. I'll play around with keeping him, but it felt distracting.

Alternatively, I could use a closer crop. Which do you think would be better?

If you have enough pixels, I'd try cropping about 20% off the top, half the distance to the bird on the left.

Scott

I've applied the crop. I do like it. This what you were talking about?

Definitely better, but looks like you cropped from the right too. I'd restore the right side to the original image posted.

Scott

I didn't crop the right at all, just the left. It's just a little bigger.

Actually you did crop from the right, at least compared to the first image posted. First image shows two vertical reeds, one by the beak, one to the right of the beak, then further space. Last image is cropped to just to the right of the second vertical reed. By keeping a bit more in on the right, image comes out less centered.

Hi Tom,
My crop version if you don't mind (from your first pic).
Dan