Hen in Flight

[jmd02b]

EXIF:
Camera: Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Exposure: 0.008 sec (1/125)
Aperture: f/5.6
Focal Length: 300 mm
ISO Speed: 400
Exposure Bias: 0 EV
Flash: Off, Did not fire

I was taking some cool shots of the drake and hen sitting on the water with awesome reflections until some geese busted up their party. She was the first one I could find in the viewfinder before they were too far gone. It was an unplanned panning type shot, but I was wondering if I could get some feedback on the crop and maybe some general tips on the post-processing if there were some tweaks i could make to really make the hen pop? I felt like I needed to try and crop tighter so that she didn't get lost in the busy background of the trees. Any other feedback or suggestion is always welcome.

Thank you!

[Chip]

Sorry that your photo has been overlooked.

I would honestly have a hard time making this "pop" much more. Maybe you could try lightening the body of the hen and darkening the background? Since the body of the hen is in shadow and the background is brighter, reversing the 2 might help.

Other than that, I don't know what to suggest, unfortunately.

Maybe someone else has a better idea?

[gb_eh]

There isn't much that can be done to make it pop the background is pretty busy. As for the crop ideally you want the bird or any animal for that matter coming into the frame, instead of leaving it (just looks better rule of thumb). So in this case the crop should have more room in front of the duck and less behind it. Hope that helps... Glen

[stevoarnold]

I agree with the comments about cropping - generally the bird should be looking into the frame rather than out of it.

For pop, you might want to try some very subtle darkening of the background, I would probably use a neutral grey overlay layer for that and then painting it black with a very low opacity soft brush. This is the non-destructive version of dodging and burning. Dont to too much though, theres nothing worse than a nature shot that looks like its been fiddled with in photoshop.