"Reflections" - Common snipe

[Tiago Caravana]

Dear Natugraphers,

I'm eager to improve my bird photography and definitely needing to listen to some constructive critiques, opposed to the nice compliments that I normally get in facebook, that are nice but not helping my photography skills. Thus I'm going to start posting here often.

For starters I post a very recent photo of a Common Snipe in the early morning.

Comments and suggestions are welcome!

EXIF: D7100 | Nikon 500mm f4 VR + TC 1.4X | 1/250 | f6.3 | ISO640
Hidrohide | Ballhead and Sidekick



All the best!

[Marina Scarr]

Big, warm welcome to BPN,Tiago. You have come to the right place to learn. You have a terrific looking snipe here...not an easy bird to photograph, at least here in the US, they are quite elusive. You got yourself in a nice low angle and the snipe has a good angle as well with a nice head turn toward you. I like seeing the bird in its environment. I do find the portion of the rock on the right distracting

For your information, you can post your images quite a bit larger than this, and I think it would be helpful to those commenting and critiquing if your images were a little larger.

Looking forward to future images from you.

[Tiago Caravana]

Big, warm welcome to BPN,Tiago. You have come to the right place to learn. You have a terrific looking snipe here...not an easy bird to photograph, at least here in the US, they are quite elusive. You got yourself in a nice low angle and the snipe has a good angle as well with a nice head turn toward you. I like seeing the bird in its environment. I do find the portion of the rock on the right distracting

For your information, you can post your images quite a bit larger than this, and I think it would be helpful to those commenting and critiquing if your images were a little larger.

Looking forward to future images from you.

Thanks for your feedback Marina. Here in Portugal the Snipes are also very shy and normally hide in the vegetation. But this was one of those days, they were there (about 10) in a lake almost without vegetation and very tolerant to my hidrohide. They've just arrived from migration, I hope they stay in this lake for some time.

As the image had a crop of about 85% (15% off), I was able to move it a little, getting rid off the rock on the right. Thus I post bellow a bigger pic, without the rock

[Marina Scarr]

This size works Much better and this image works much better without the rock. I hope you feel the same way. Looking forward to more.

[Satish Ranadive]

Welcome to BPN, Tiago,
Very nice image to start with. Re post looks beautiful.

Regards,
Satish.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Hi there Tiago, welcome to BPN!! The repost looks better with the larger size and cleaned-up rocks at right. You got yourself a very nice low angle (the type that I like alot) but unfortunately you had some rocks to contend with in front of the snipe and reflection...would you have been able to manoeuvre left or right to get those out of the way? Having said this I do realize there may have been other rocks out of the frame though. Snipe looks great, well exposed and good details.

Hint: Snipes are wary here too, but they respond quite nicely to audio (if you do not mind this type of tool for photography).

[Tiago Caravana]

Hi there Tiago, welcome to BPN!! The repost looks better with the larger size and cleaned-up rocks at right. You got yourself a very nice low angle (the type that I like alot) but unfortunately you had some rocks to contend with in front of the snipe and reflection...would you have been able to manoeuvre left or right to get those out of the way? Having said this I do realize there may have been other rocks out of the frame though. Snipe looks great, well exposed and good details.

Hint: Snipes are wary here too, but they respond quite nicely to audio (if you do not mind this type of tool for photography).

Thanks Daniel!

There was no way to have this photo without rocks. Aldo I have others in the same day and lake that are cleaner. I post this one because I wanted to understand how were the rocks perceived in BPN and how could I improve this image.

I tried using audio but it didn't work, anyway it wasn't nedeed :)