After quite a long time without any birding, I've finally got a chance to go out with the camera. It's migration season in Israel and we've got lots of beautiful birds going south (hope to be able to post some here). I found this young woodchat shrike (or perhaps it's a red-backed shrike), and though he's not the most beautiful of birds, I liked the composition and thought I'd see what you thought about it. Any comments very much welcome, especially about the composition, but also more generally.
Canon 550D, 300L f/4 + 1.4X TC, Av 10, 1/800, ISO 400
I've used PS to crop (quite a bit), do levels, some saturation, noise reduction on the background, and sharpening.
I like what you are doing here nice subject placement and balancing the frame. Using the rule of thirds and angles to fit together a pleasing composition IMO. There is a lot going on in the frame, the bird, long perch with foliage and a multi color background but it works for me. Wish the lower right hand corner was cleaner behind the subject maybe some cloning would clean it a tad. Nice post, art and photography go hand in hand and I love the composition and design of the picture - keep em coming.
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 09-19-2012 at 04:25 PM.
Hi Arnon, I think your composition is strong and I like the placement of the small bird in the frame. Your exposure, detail, and color rendition all look good to me. Eye contact always makes for a better image in my book and you have a nice intimate look here. For me the challenge in the image is the background. The structures in the bg tend to take my mind away from the nature aspect of the image. Would love to see a version with only sky in the background which you might have captured by changing your shooting angle a bit. Otherwise very nicely done!
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Thanks Jeff for you comment. I tried to do as you suggest, cropping out the background behind the bird, but I must say that it came out a bit unnatural. Not sure I'm happy with it (though that's likely because I already have the original in mind), but let me know what you think.
Thanks Kerry for your comments as well. I see what you mean about the building in the background taking away from the natural setting. However, in this particular case the building is actually an impressive ancient fortress (Atlit), and so I found the setting with the building especially impressive. Still, one obviously can't get that from the picture itself...
Woodchat Shrike
