Early morning grouse - First post!

Hello. This is my first ever post so I have no idea what to expect. I live in the North of England and try to concentrate on local subjects. I have admired the standard of photos on here for a long time but have been reticent about posting because the standard has been so high. I am a very keen amateur photographer but my computer skills are pretty poor and I am still near the bottom of a steep learning curve.


This photo of a displaying Blackcock was taken from a pop up hide close to home.


Canon 7D. Canon 300mm f2.8. Tripod.

iso 500. f2.8. 1/320 sec.


I hope I have posted this correctly and thank you for looking.

Andrew

Hi Andrew, welcome from another new member from the north of England! The photo is showing fine.

I like the low POV of the shot, any lower and I think you'd have had to deal with too much oof area in the foreground. The angle of the bird is nice, as is the timing of the open beak. However, it looks to me like you've suffered in getting detail out of the dark areas, have you had to play with this much in PP?

A strong point of this forum is the number of people who can show you ways to get the extra detail out of your shot, so hopefully someone will be along soon to give you some specific PP crit

Hey there Andrew...welcome to BPN!! Quite a fine first post you share here. Great calling pose in the muted light, and the blacks look good to me. Still a tough exposure though with those bright white tail feathers (perhaps there is some subtle detail to extract in raw processing using the highlights slider, depending which software you use). Love the low angle which created nice separation between the subject and background. Perhaps a crop a tad off the bottom (to just above your signature) and then adding that amount back at top would work well IMO.

Looking forward to more, and don't be shy to critique others' works too...all part of the fun and learning here at BPN:c3:

Hi Andrew(We might be related !!!) Good first post and welcome. These birds are pigs to get exposed correctly with the whits and dark areas. You will get good advice and there are looads of highlight /shadow programmes around apart from Photo shop.
Cheers
JohnR

Really nice calling pose, killer clean BG and tones. Welcome on board! :)

welcome Andrew,nice image,love the calling pose,nice light and good detail,blacks look good on my screen.well done.

love the calling pose and display of habitat, it has a lot going for it. Some of the blacks are blocked (they have no detail) I'd try to recover them but it might be difficult with the 7D....

TFS and welcome to BPN

Thank you all for your kind comments, it is very encouraging. I should have mentioned that it was cropped very slightly for composition and the levels adjusted in Lightroom. As I said I have an awful lot to learn about developing pictures on the computer (and taking them!). I think you are right about the 7D Arash. Without wanting to blame my equipment I do not like the camera at all and have recently got a 5D MK 111.

Hi Andrew, these are the best looking Grouse IMHO and have spent of a lot of time 'up north' photographing them, but these are so beautiful, they put the 'Reds' to shame. Just a thought, but you could double process the image and get the best of both worlds. Keep the images coming, nice one. :cheers:

TFS
Steve

What puts this over the top for me Andrew is the dof, EXP, clarity and drop-dead gorgeous colors.

Hi Andy. Good to see you posting on here,think I might have told you before but these Grouse images of yours always look great to me, this is no exception.
Will be in touch.
Keith.