This was the second round of the internal print league and I submitted a couple of prints.
Just watching
This man was standing in the square watching the proceedings as the new President of Malta was being inaugurated. All eyes were on the band, the soldiers and the dignitaries and I turned to get this grab shot. For the print competition I converted it to black and white.
Judge’s comments
… I like the expression on the person’s face that is very important with the picture
… to me the picture looks a bit grey, I’d like to see just a bit more contrast
… as it stands I am quite happy seeing his legs but to me the picture is really the top half
… his legs are not playing a major part in the story telling, that is his hands and his face, if you actually concentrated on the top half, I think it would have been more effective
… or even gone in closer on his face, a wonderful face
Roscoe the Eagle Owl
The European Eagle Owl is a big bird and Roscoe was placed high up on a gravestone. It was raining heavily but this didn’t seem to bother him very much. He was the first bird of the day at my Natures Photos specialist bird of prey workshop.
Judge’s comments
… the viewpoint is good, shooting up at the owl, so you’ve got it in a good position
… the eyes stand out,
… looking at it square, the bird looks very thin to me, it probably is a true thing, but I’d to squash it up a bit, but that is obviously the way the camera took the picture
… I like the framing on the picture
… it could have been a club outing, it doesn’t really matter
… I like the lighting on this, on the hair at the top
… the bird is just a bit too big in the frame, I’d like to see a bit more area around the picture
The scores
There were 34 images in this print round in Division 1.
‘Just watching’ scored 8 and ‘Roscoe the Eagle Owl’ scored 8.5.
The original images
‘Just watching’:
The image was shot at ISO100, 105mm, f5.6 and 1/200sec. I corrected the angle of my grab shot, cropped in closer and then used Lightroom to convert to black and white.
These are the other images from our time in Malta.
‘Roscoe the Eagle Owl’:
I cropped the image (!) to make the owl bigger and using Lightroom reduced the bright leaves on the bushes behind.
The image was shot at ISO100, 200mm, f2.8 and 1/100 sec.
These are the other images from the Specialist birds of prey workshop organised by Bob Brind-Surch.