Male Lazuli on the ground

[Stan Cunningham]

I don't like ground photos as much as perched, but this is a bunting. I do have some good ones I need to work on perched but thought I would look for feedback on how to best present a bird feeding on the ground.
Bird was very close obviously which limits dof but his color and look struck me.
Canon 7D, 500 F4 with 1.4 (700)
ISO 500, 7.1, and 1/2000 sec.
Tripod in a blind
As usual, all comments appreciated.
Stan

[William Malacarne]

Stan

I like this bird a lot.
Maybe for composition I would add some room to right and bottom and remove some from top and left. This would move him out of the center.

Bill

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Stan,

Greetings. Bill's suggested comp adjustments seem right to me, a wider aspect would help too, I think.

Toning down the bg might help the harsh lighting. Like the color on the bird.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Stan Cunningham]

Thanks guys, Michael as a CS5 noob, how would tone down the background?
I am going to have to finally learn how to add canvas too as the bird was in the very forground of the photo.
Thanks
Stan

[wendell westfall]

Stan, pretty colors; another vote for adding canvas (I had the same deficiency in my last post).

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Thanks guys, Michael as a CS5 noob, how would tone down the background?


Well... There is a bit of a learning curve, uh, learning curves, but it's just the thing for this kind of adjustment. I'm particular to LAB mode curves (Image->Mode->Lab Color then curves adjustment layer).

As an example:

94200

Cheers,

-Michael-

[gail bisson]

The harsh light is a killer here. The bird was too close and you have already identified the DOF issue. I too vote for adding canvas although I too, am a CS5 newbie and am learning how to do that!
Gail

[DarrenMcKenna]

I love photographing these guys. You could set up a perch and use birdjam to attract them to your perch. You have plenty of shutter speed so I would reduce your ISO to 400. Then stop down to f8 and that would help in getting the tail in focus. You can safely shoot static birds down around 1/500 and still get sharp images, although faster doesn't hurt.