Hi. Just curious what does "pattern" mean in your comments?

Nice image but I find my eye going to some of the bright spots especially the one in the lower right hand corner.

  Posted: 06/13/2025 20:19:49

nice image, well-exposed and sharp. IMHO, I do think that the bird flying away from the camera makes for a challenging composition. To me, these herons appear most appealing when they are flying across the frame where you can nicely capture open wings.   Posted: 06/13/2025 21:44:00

I like the position of the claws. I agree with Raj on the bird flying away.   Posted: 06/17/2025 01:30:02

These are really good birds to practice on and learn from. They are large, tolerant of humans, and relatively slow-moving.

For all of those reasons, they are very popular photo subjects. So in competition, it takes one heck of an amazing heron shot to get the judges' attention.

In general, a bird flying is no longer an amazing shot, though there was a time it was exceptional. For current competitions, a bird whose only action is flying away from the viewer, who is not perfectly sharp, with an unremarkable background, is not going to score well.

That said, I like the juxtaposition of the blue-gray bird with the green water. The bright spots in the BG can be muted to some extent.

Lillian   Posted: 06/18/2025 19:54:38