I shot this last year when spending a 10 days on the Chobe River. While we saw a lot of large mammals, being on the river gave as many wonderful bird experiences too. This African Jacana (Jesus bird) was running pretty much toward the boat. Shooting with a long zoom I was able to get sufficient blur in the background to seperate it from the visual noise and still catch the water droplets he was throwing into the air is it charged from lily pad to lily pad I like the dynamism of the bird running, and also the complementary colours of the blue and the orange/brown feathers making the bird pop visually
All critiques are welcome
For me, I love the composition, but for my taste the colors are really strong
I love the angle of the sun, and the water drops
Heres a different take on the image
While I like the b&w version, the strong complementary colors really work best in this striking image. Great drama and color here.
The BW version was developed to act as a dodge layer for the colour image, I tend to do a number of BW versions and use them as layers (Blend using Luminosity layer) or to use as a mask :)