Shouty Starling

Hi all,

This is my first post here and am eager to learn!

I photographed this Starlilng last January whilst sat in a small, pop up hide in my back garden. The Starling's sat on a small apple tree shouting it's head off and it was a chance image, I was trying to get photos of greenfinches at the nearby seed feeders at the time.

It was an overcast day and I was using the under expose by a 1/3rd rule at the time (whereas now I use the expose to the right rule for exposure). Which means there was a lot of noise in the blacks, but I processed this out with Neat Image.

So, processing done was: in Lightroom, +0.86 exposure, no blacks or tone curve (or any other tweaks), set white balance to cloudy. Export to tif and in photoshop process out the noise with Neat Image, add a slight S curve for tone and 5% highlight using the Shadow/Highlight tool, a little Smart Sharpen once resized for upload. No cropping has been done, this is full frame out of the camera.

I like this image as I feel it shows the Starlings character off, but I'm wondering if there's anything else you experts out there would do to improve it.

EXIF: Canon 1D Mk2N, Canon 100-400 @ 380mm, 1/500 sec at f/6.3, ISO 400, auto white balance, AV mode, no flash, tripod.

Many thanks in advance for any comments.

Cheers,
Ben

Hello Ben
I like the expression on the starlings face, like you said it shows the character and I love it that you can see right into his mouth :)

Your image could have been improved if you had taken it in portrait mode, that way you could have more room at the top of it's head and also you would have been able to get the tail feathers in the photograph too,

HTH as I'm keen to learn too :)

Jacqui

Welcome Ben! The pose that you captured with the open bill and slightly cocked head is truly wonderful! I share Jacqui's wish that you had taken this as a vertical photograph. A common critique around here is to give the bird more room in the image. While clipping body parts is not always a problem, in this image I wish we had the rest of the tail and the some more room above that head. Glad to hear that you have improved your strategy in terms of exposure...we're all learning one step at a time. See you around. :)

Jacqui and Judd, thanks for the welcome and comments, good points about giving the subject more space.

I'm thinking that the next stage in my photography learning may well be to use portrait mode more as it's very rare that I use it these days!

I'm really liking this forum as it's so devoted to honest feedback rather than back slapping. :)

Cheers,
Ben

Ben,

The Starlings pose makes me smile and you also have some nice detail in the feathers. The space issue has been covered.

ben -
another trick about composition - - by having the branch at a diagonal to the camera plane, your making depth of field (DOF) a potential issue when using a 400mm lens.For 380mm at f6.3 and assuming you were about 20' from the bird, your total effective DOF is only 2.5 inches. Assuming it were possible, moving a little more to the left might have helped. If you look at the Redstart photo posted by Richard Steel in Avian, WIld & Free yesterday around 4:45PM, you'll see what can be done.

practice makes perfect - hope to see more posts

I love your starling image! I raised one from a baby (fallen from its nest way too early) and cannot begin to tell here what wonderful little fellas they are! Love how you caught all the little points of his feathers! Wonder if fill flash would have brought out some of the gorgeous iridescence in the feathers? Agree with what has already been said. If you are so inclined, you could add head room and probably clone in the branches reasonably well, if you're skilled at it. I might crop from the right enough to remove where the bg changes to dark green.

Many thanks for your comments, much appreciated.

Peter, good point about the angle of the branch. Moving wasn't an option with this image, I was around 12' away from the bird in my hide, but I will certainly keep an eye on that in the future.

Anita, I bet it was entertaining raising one of these guys! I haven't played with flash at all, so that should be a fun thing to try out.

Thanks everyone, I've learnt loads just by uploading 1 image! :) Now for some more practice!