I've had a lack or luck (or persistence) in my brief time as a bird hunter. Finally got a lens on a sparrow in a reasonably pleasing setting. Frustrating -- joggers and loud chatterers can blast by on a trail and the birds ignore them. I stop and point a camera at them (trying to pretend I'm looking the other way) and they get paranoid.
No chance here to move and get the branch off the bird -- it flew. I was lucky to get this much.
Canon 5D Mk III, 600mm II, 1.4X. Big Gitzo, Wimberley II. ISO 800, 1/640, f/14, because I had just been shooting 2 geese and trying to maximize focus on the back one. Didn't take time to change the setting. When I did, the bird flew. But thanks to the wonderful pinpoint AF on that body I was able to focus right on the bird's face. (AI Focus, one point selected.) Only a slight crop from FF. Slight adjustments in LR, went to PS to remove a few very small distracting OOF branches, and did a slight amount of Detail Extractor to help out the shadows.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 03-03-2013 at 11:17 PM.
It's a nice image of the song sparrow. I like the size of the perch in relation to the bird. The lighting is pleasing, though I prefer direct frontlight vs slightly off angle light, in a scenario like this. Background control/variation is excellent....I usually ignore joggers and talkers too, but if someone points a 600mm lens at me, I get pretty paranoid as well :)
Your bird is nice and sharp and I like the look back pose. Exposure on neck looks good to me. What I find problematic about this image is the branch in front of the sparrow b/c of the way it cuts through the bird and distracts.
Lovely shot Dianne - great OOF BG and perch and great look-back pose. I am a fan of photographs of wild animals (including birds) showing their natural habitat. I suppose in a perfect world there would be no branches in the way, but we don't, so the branch seems natural to me; i.e. that's the way we normally see them. This is nice as is, but I wonder if a vertical crop might be an alternative framing possibility? Just a thought and well done overall.
Thanks for the complements. But a vertical crop would loose the OOF grass heads that balance the bird and provide context. Without them, I probably wouldn't have shot it.
I cropped just slightly, but was careful to let the grass heads end far enough away from the edge of the frame. Clean edges are very important when possible.
Finally, an environemtal portrait
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