Driving past a dam this week and saw these cormorants sunning themselves. I liked the way the lower ones were looking at the higher one, but there's some distracting grass in the foreground I think.
It is a textbook example of how to portray three dimensions in a two dimensional medium. Everything in that image just pops.
The lighting is spot on (the light falling on the wing of the cormorant on the right is just amazing, as well as the one at the bottom and the one at the left), contrasting edges, distance from subject to background, the right subject, and expert processing.
Olympus cameras are famous for delivering this type of effect (although they're capable of being produced with any DSLR; I've seen some great examples with the 1D Mark III).
