Folks in fine fettle,
I would like to post another robin and dandelion picture from last May. Sitting on a hill and being around all sorts of digging birds is great fun, as I'm sure you'd agree. This picture was taken with the Canon 7D and 200mm f2.8L + Kenko 1.4 teleconverter, for a combined focal length of 280mm. iso400, 1/1250, f4. I've cropped a slab off the top and a slice off the bottom for compositional purposes. If you'd like to picture the picture as shot, just imagine a little more blurry green on the bottom and a little more abyssal grey on top. Rather than post the same picture as yesterday but with a different head angle, I thought I might like to post a different picture from the same time spent. Many thanks for your considered opinions and ideas...
The image does portray what you described, the bird look to be occupied with what it is doing amongst the flower field, which show good story in the image. For me I like more room at the bottom, to show more greenery.
I'd ask the folks if you'd prefer a higher angle on this one? I took several but they don't work as well. I enjoy seeing the robin's underthings and feet being ensconced in the blurry greens...
It's a nice image of this (underappreciated?) thrush, Breakfast. I'm a low angle junky, so I'm on
board with the general look and feel of the image. That being said, I could see raising your shooting
position just a couple of inches to get a bit more definition on the grasses and the dandelion flowers
that would fall within the zone of focus. This might also include shooting at iso 800 with a stopped down
f-stop for a little fine tuning, (in regards to what you could get in focus). I like the pano crop. Nice job
balancing the fg and bg. A pp consideration would be to crop out or get rid of the old dandelion head
on the far right side of the frame....
A jolly smack of thanks for your intelligent and helpful comments, Shawn. It's been my experience thus far on the bird forums that folks tend to shy away from birds as common as these, i.e., when I've posted snowy owl photos there have been "hits" and comments galore! Which makes me all the more appreciative of your thoughtful suggestions. If I were in the same situation again, on the same hill with the same lovely light and the same robins and dandelions, I would surely "work the subject" more, because of course the robin is not exactly a skittish little thing and absolutely, I would have stopped down and pushed to 800, as you've suggested, would have tried all the angles. This is a good thing, and it means that I've learned a lot since May. No small thanks to brain machines like you and others on this fine forum. Perhaps some robin-shooting novice out there will read THIS and say: "Man! I never even THOUGHT about stopping down and sitting down and crouching and standing and leaning and being a general weirdbeard on a hill when I'm snitching on my robins. Usually I just point a camera at a bird, make sure he's in the middle of the frame, and snippity-snap-snap until he flies away. I'm gonna change my way of living! That Zierman and even that Breakfast: smart cookies!" Again: thanks!
Last edited by Jack Breakfast; 12-06-2012 at 09:12 AM.
It's interesting how biased bird photographers are for certain species. You are completely correct.
People go ga-ga for owls even if the image is sub-par, compared to say a very well composed, technically excellent
image of a sparrow. It is what it is...I think I understand some of it, but definitely wonder what's up at times...
Yes, Shawn. I'm an obsessive photographer of the house sparrow, I can't get enough, they are such willing subjects and they are truly beautiful. They're not even really sparrows. I go nuts over the common gulls too, the Canada goose, anything and everything that will give me access. I refuse to discriminate between the species and see pulchritude in each and every one, even the cormorants who are culled left, right, and center. Thanks for the like-minded and very well-put analysis. Don't forget: the birders are biased too. How many times have I asked if they saw anything they liked and I got an answer like "Naw, just a few egrets and a great blue." It's rude to retort with "Are you insane? Go take a nap somewhere!" even if it is the most accurate thing to say. If my arm were twisted to the point of crying out, perhaps I'd admit to being a birder as well as a bird photographer. Mostly just a huge fan of the alar, I guess.
Another look at one of our hillside robins
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