First Photograph

[Tom Rambaut]

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55641976@N03/5156893595/

This was taken a couple of weeks back.

Gear - Eos 7D, 500mm f4 lens, evaluative metering at zero:1/160 sec at 5.6. ISO 200.

Hand held from car badly balanced on window frame.

From stopping and seeing the bird - Mistletoebird (male) - and it taking off was about 15 sec.

The reds blew out and I pulled the saturation back in this color.

Cropped to 8 x 10 - my favourite.

All comments welcome - still undecided about the wire to the right of bird.

[Chris Ober]

Hi Tom. Flickr has changed the way they give you the links for sharing on other sites. Here are some brief instructions I just wrote down that will show the image in the post instead of just a link.

First Way -

1) Login to your Flickr account
2) Select image
3) Actions - View All Sizes
4) Select size image you want to post to BPN. (1024px max size wide (left number) or 800px max size high (right number))

5) If using Firefox - Right click on "Download the _____ size of this photo" link.
5a) Click Copy Link Location

5.2) Internet explorer – right click on image, select properties, Copy the text in the “Address:”

6) You can use that link location that was copied and paste into the Insert Image or Attachments dialog on BPN
--------------------------------------------------------------


Second way

1) Login to your Flickr account
2) Select image
3) Click Share This - Grab the HTML/BBCode
4) Select the Image size you want to post from the dropdown box
5) Select BBCode
6) Select and Copy the code they give you which looks something like this:


[ url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisober/5133495270/][ img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5133495270_ebeffbf0a9_b.jpg[/img][/url]
[ url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/chrisober/5133495270/]Ober_20101025_5035[/url] by [ url=http://www.flickr.com/people/chrisober/]cober[/url], on Flickr

7) Paste this into the body of the message on BPN

All you really need from the lengthy code they give you is the part that looks like
[ img]http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4088/5133495270_ebeffbf0a9_b.jpg[/img] which can be pasted directly into the body of the message. Or use the file path part without the the IMG /IMG tags and the attachments or insert image dialogs.

[Julie Kenward]

Thanks Chris...that should help him to get his image posted here so more people will be apt to critique it.

Tom, you have some good things going on here. The bird is certainly detailed and in focus. It appears that not only did you blow out the reds but the whites as well - or else they are right on the line because they look blown on my monitor. These "catch them on the fly" images don't give you a lot of time to get the exposure right so spending that's understandable. When you do have time to sit and photograph a dark bird next time, check how much compensation you need in order to get the whites and blacks both within the histogram. If you can't get both, go for saving the whites as you can usually bring up the darks in pp easier than you can recover the whites.

I'd definitely remove the OOF area on the fence and the excrement as well. Looking forward to your next post!

[Tom Rambaut]

Thank you both.

The whole linking/attachment thing was a pain - not very computer literate.

Thanks for the advise on that.

It seems that an image can vary quite a bit on monitors, but yes the whites do need to come back a bit. Looking at the original histogram it could have come back a quite a bit. I have noiced with other images that if I'm taking a picture of a bird with white highlights and the background is dark then the whites get blown out. This is where some compensation would no doubt be handy. Take light away.

Best

Tom

[Tom Rambaut]

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4003/5156893595_41138a4ee7_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/55641976@N03/5156893595/)
Mistletoebird (http://www.flickr.com/photos/55641976@N03/5156893595/) by tphrambaut (http://www.flickr.com/people/55641976@N03/), on Flickr


Thats seems to work. Here is the image again.

[Johan Kruger]

I like this, kewl looking bird and nice background. I also like the rusty wire. Just that funny bright whatever bottom left below the wire is distracting. Very nice :)

[Tom Rambaut]

Thanks Johan for the comment.

The "whatever" is mistletoe seeds that the Mistletoe bird consumes and then excreates. Main bird for the distribution of the various Mistletoe plants.

I guess it is distracting. When I work out how I may take it out and see how the picture looks.

Cheers

Tom

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

I cannot see the image from work, so will check ot out from home later. I had three Mistletoebird nests near my place last January, all at shoulder height on small trees! :)