My first image on this site

Masked Lapwing from Linear Park near Dernancourt in Adelaide

K-7, Bigma at 500mm, f/7.1, 1/640, ISO 400, Tripod

Welcome to the site,
Nice first image, i like the low angle and the background. Good work.

Cheers.

Hi Kym,

Exposure is good as with sharpness. The composition is quite good as well - especially the low angle. Not sure about the sqaure crop, might work better as a traditional landscape crop?

Good first post!

Hi Kym, a very nice first post. Agree with Dale about the square crop not being the best format for this image. Not enough room in front of the bird for my tastes. As Dale said, the exposure and sharpness look great, colours too (greens look a bit vivid).
Looks like a fair bit of noise in the BG, either that or you are using a filter or lens protector which has created some weird effects. If so I would advise you to do away with it (extra glass in front of the lens is always going to effect things like that).
Other than these points, a great shot of this species How do you find the bigma on that camera? The effective focal length must be something like 900mm You must have to use a tripod all the time. Do you have the 50-500 or the 150-500?

Cheers, Paul

P.S. Sorry if I've been too critical on your first post Please don't be scared away Look forward to seeing more from you

All good. I'm a mod/site tech on the other forum.
50-500 on the Pentax the 150 is not available.
Pentax has in body SR (aka IS, VR) so does work hand held, but it is heavy(1.86kgs for the lens).
All Pentax DSLR's are 1.5 crop so its 750mm equivalent
(Well, except the 40Mpx 645D - but that's a large format body )

Hi Kym
Great to have you posting mate! Love the low angle but agree with Paul about the comp. Personally rarely a fan of square crops and in this image it actually draws your eye away from the subject. I reckon a landscape version with more room on the right than the left would be great.

Howdy Kym. Good to see you over here with the 'bird nerds'

I think the others have pretty much summed up my thoughts on this one too. I'm not a fan of the square crop either, I'd crop this landscape with more room to the right than left just as David's mentioned.

Bravo on getting down low, it improves an image ten-fold. Some good detail in this one too.