geese
 

[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7853913922/"][IMG]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8421/7853913922_fb09a66027.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7853913922/"]splash[/URL] by [URL="http://www.flickr.com/people/alexharrison101/"]alexharrison101[/URL], on Flickr

some things just went so wrong with this shot...ah well.

[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7853910082/"][IMG]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8288/7853910082_fddfac2dba.jpg[/IMG][/URL]
[URL="http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7853910082/"]white goose in profile[/URL] by [URL="http://www.flickr.com/people/alexharrison101/"]alexharrison101[/URL], on Flickr

this one i think the focus is ok, but composition not great.

feedback?

I think you've answered your own questions here, which is good. The second one you could crop to make it a bit more balanced. Shame about the first one as I like the shot. Maybe could be a bit sharper but I know how difficult it is to get these shots right.

a child with a dog came along the riverbank and scared them out of the water, so i had literally no time to set up...therefore the shot got taken with whatever settings i had on at the time(!). it's good to try new things though - i've not done well with birds before, so i was fairly pleased with these.

It's a mare when you've got the camera set up for one thing, then something else suddenly happens and you don't have time to change settings. If you do you miss the shot.

I normally make it a hard rule not to offer comment on photos, but I will ask one question and make one observation.

Q. I assume that the first has been cropped, so what was lost? The suggestions I would have made (if I made suggestions) would be affected by the answer to this question. It may give you help in the future to ponder it.

Observation. No amount of cropping of number 2 will improve the balance, but a rotation and clone fill would.

re the first: the crop was to get rid of the out of focus rear end of another goose(!). i know it's an awkward crop, but i thought it was better to remove a distracting element and leave this bird on its own. i didn't crop the wing - that was just my poor photography...this is what i took just after the first one (so you can see what the bank was like - kinda crowded and you can see the bird i cropped out. excuse the colour fringing...):

[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7862759216/][img]http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8445/7862759216_60041f0409.jpg[/img][/url]
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/alexharrison101/7862759216/]just after 'splash'[/url] by [url=http://www.flickr.com/people/alexharrison101/]alexharrison101[/url], on Flickr

re the second: i don't know what a clone fill is. why would rotating help?

The first shot unfortunately does suffer from bad composition but the detail in the wing is really good and the water splash adds a nice bit of action .

The second shot again has some really nice detail in it and I think [U]could[/U] be improved with a little crop off the top but probably would still look a little cramped , shame about that dam feather .
I can't help with your question about the clone fill and rotation because I'm not sure what a clone fill is and I can't see how a rotation would help .

Your third image is my favorite , the composition still needs a tweak and you've lost a bit of detail in the blown high lights but I like the geese in the background and the eye contact from the main goose .

Mark

I've sent an explanation of why I favour a rotation etc. as a personal message. For reasons I explained to Alex, I make it a hard rule never to offer advice (certainly in public) on the "artistic" rather than the technical side of photography. This and the other post in the milky water" thread were not to be repeated aberrations.