Photography forum image of the month March 2011

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Urban Eagle by Michaelaw

This month’s choice is Urban Eagle by Michaelaw.

I chose this image for sev­eral reasons:

Story and com­po­si­tion — The title Urban Eagle tells it all and the awe­some back­ground imagery of a bridge and cranes make the story more com­pelling. Themes and sub­themes abound in shots like this and I really enjoy that. The eagle is well posi­tioned in this shot that had to be com­posed super-quickly. The back­ground ele­ments (bridge struc­ture and cranes) are also very well placed in the shot.

Degree of dif­fi­culty — timing/decisive moment — This is no easy shot to get. The tim­ing, (just look at the lovely frozen open-wings) the focus, and com­po­si­tion have to be very well synced and Michaelaw did an excel­lent job.

Sharp­ness — The bird’s feath­ers are really sharp and the eye looks quite sharp along with some lovely back­ground bokeh.

Colour and post pro­cess­ing — Both are well con­trolled to cre­ate this very strik­ing image with a lovely ‘cool’ colour palette that totally suits the image. If it were my shot I may have burned in the rear white wings a bit and dodged the face a wee bit but that’s it.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats again Michaelaw for cap­tur­ing this won­der­ful scene!