How can I improve this one

[cangoose]

Hi I'm a new comer to this forum & loved all what I have seen so far.. so here is one of mine




This was taken hand held, with a Nikon 70-300 lense on my D70.

CG
allias (Canadian Goose)

[bobt54]

Nicely done. My suggestions would be push up the color saturation a bit. I think the light is a bit too harsh. Adjust the color balance to warm it up some. I also think it is cropped a bit too close on the top and left.

I think it also has the potential to be a stunning black and white image with a little bit of work.

[dakemist]

I wouldn't touch the saturation, as on my monitor it seems to be on the verge of over-saturated, as exemplified by the bright orange colour of the legs. It is hard to expect vibrant colours on such an overcast day, so I don't think you'll have much luck playing around with them, unless you are a true Photoshop guru. The cropping is definitely much too tight, giving the picture a static feeling to it, and the duck is not sharp enough, perhaps because you were shooting at a long focal length hand held. Overall, the picture has a flat feeling to it, and the background is not very inspiring. The composition gives the idea that the duck is being weighted down by the horizon, instead of being pushed into the air by it. Keep shooting!

Cheers,

Alex

[gemmf]

It looks over-saturated and over-sharpened to me. Have you done any post processing on this or is this straight out of the camera? It doesn't look very natural to me personally.