Foreground

[William Dickson]

Thoughts please on the foreground of the attached image. Does it look cluttered? Or, don't you think, it shows the wren, in a natural background, the bird being small and shy ??

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[Kevin Giannini]

Hello William,
IMO it does not show the wren ideally. Not only is the foreground busy but so is the background, which is distracting from the bird. Sometimes some distracting elements can be cloned out or dealt with to make them less evident, but here I'm afraid all the twigs and branches are over powering the subject. One way to deal with distracting BACKGROUND elements is to shoot with a larger aperture, which would throw some background objects out of focus. Sometimes smaller distracting shadows or foreground twigs can be cloned out, but here they are covering quite a bit of the bird and would be very difficult (for me anyway) to do and re-create the bird. Keep shooting!
Kevin

[Diane Miller]

I agree with Kevin -- the bird is just too overpowered for me, although it does show the way things are sometimes.

It's hard to tell at such a small size, bt it looks like you did a good job focusing on the wren, and it is nicely framed in the triangle of branches. It's just a matter of what you want to show in an image.

[William Dickson]

Thanks Diane, I was going to delete it, then looking at it closer, I thought, it somehow shows the bird in its natural behaviour, I was in a hide at the time and the bird was a fair distance from me, I was using a lens at 500mm I realise, for a quality photo, the foreground should be clear. but on this occasion, i thought it just looks cute

[Floyd Davidson]

Thoughts please on the foreground of the attached image. Does it look cluttered? Or, don't you think, it shows the wren, in a natural background, the bird being small and shy ??

Is that image already cropped, and are there enough pixels in the original to allow cropping away half of them?

When framed right, and with a few manipulations, that looks pretty good! But starting with a small JPEG and making it even smaller is good for a concept demo, but won't make for a production image. (If you'd like to see specifically what I did to it, just say the word and I'll post it.)

[Diane Miller]

I'd love to see it!

And, Floyd, it looks like you're new here -- we'd all love for you to go to the Introductions etc forum and introduce yourself and tell us a little about your photography -- you've made a couple of interesting comments on other threads.

[William Dickson]

Is that image already cropped, and are there enough pixels in the original to allow cropping away half of them?

When framed right, and with a few manipulations, that looks pretty good! But starting with a small JPEG and making it even smaller is good for a concept demo, but won't make for a production image. (If you'd like to see specifically what I did to it, just say the word and I'll post it.)

Love to see what you can 'do with it' :)

[Floyd Davidson]

Love to see what you can 'do with it' :)

Okay! Just be mindful this is to demonstrate a composition concept. Nothing else is signficant, and without looking at the full sized original I can't tell of a reasonable production image is possible. But...

The problem I see with the image as originally posted is one of excessive distraction, rather than complimentary association, between the bird and its environment. In practice and saying it simply: too much clutter makes the main subject hard to see. On a more academic level, a fellow by the name of Rudolf Arnheim (1904-2007) who was a "perceptual psychologist" wrote the classic and defining textbook "Art and Visual Perception" and also wrote a very interesting essay "Entropy and Art" in 1971 which is online at www.kenb.ca/z-aakkozzll/pdf/arnheim.pdf. It is not an easy read, but here is a quote from the introduction that I really like:

"When nothing superfluous is included and nothing indispensable left out,
one can understand the interrelation of the whole and its parts,
as well as the hierarchic scale of importance and power
by which some structural features are dominant, others subordinate."

Often that means objects can be less distractive if they are darker, lower contrast, less saturated, less sharp or whatever compared to the main subject. So in the edited image there is the combination of simply deleting the environment that does not provide a frame that focuses the viewer's eye on the bird, plus the bird itself has been sharpened, with brightness and contrast adjusted to make it standout more while the environment has had exactly the opposite done. I didn't go to much effort at getting smooth transitions because it is just too small an image to ever make it really good. But I think it shows the concept pretty well, and the original might be worth the effort.

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that. Its good, as 'bird' photographs goes. As it shows more bird than clutter. But, IMO, the original would appeal more to non-bird people, as 'the clutter' becomes part of the complete picture. If you can understand what I am meaning

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi William, try to avoid huge crops as IQ will suffer, although I appreciate what you are trying to do, you really want to get the subject more out in the open. Do you ever get a chance to visit the Cairngorms?

Steve

[William Dickson]

Hi William, try to avoid huge crops as IQ will suffer, although I appreciate what you are trying to do, you really want to get the subject more out in the open. Do you ever get a chance to visit the Cairngorms?

Steve

Actually going up there next year Steve, with a friend of mine, who is into birds bigstyle, but not really into photography, so between the two of us we should get some good images, fingers crossed

[Steve Kaluski]

I'll drop you a PM if you are.

[William Dickson]

Hi William, try to avoid huge crops as IQ will suffer, although I appreciate what you are trying to do, you really want to get the subject more out in the open. Do you ever get a chance to visit the Cairngorms?

Steve

Took this pic today, with my Canon 7D, and a Sigma 150-500 at 400mm AV Mode ISO 400 125 @F8. Steve, is this cropped too much or not enough, or should I have taken the shot at 500mm and crop less.

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[Diane Miller]

There is more emphasis on learning and examples in ETL, which makes it a little different from the other forums, but for the future it's best to put new images in new threads, and modifications of the original one in a continuation of the same thread.

You ask if it is cropped too much, but you don't say what % of the original frame it represents. Or do you mean this is the full frame and are referring to in-camera framing? Cropping usually means after the fact, but I doubt there is a rigid definition.

Telephoto zooms are virtually all softer at the longest end, and it could take some controlled experimentation with your camera body and processing to decide which is better -- frame tighter or go for a little less zoom and crop later. More pixels on the subject is an important goal, but one to be balanced against more image degradation from other factors as you zoom more. Nothing beats getting closer, but with birds, that's not easy.

This image is too small to evaluate sharpness, and what really matters is the sharpness you see as you bring it into the RAW converter -- looking at 100% or 1:1. Sharpness can be difficult to evaluate here with all the resizing, conversion to JPEG, and whatever resizing might go on if you have this posted on Flickr or the like.

Even on a good tripod and head, 1/125 at 400mm (and on a 7D that's 640mm!) could cause some slight blurring without the best technique.

I think the shadows might be lightened a little here, but it's a very pleasant shot of the hawk in its natural surroundings. My inclination would be to crop out the heavy branch in the UL and to try to get rid of the one that makes a dark triangle in the UR, but cropping it will crowd the bird. Maybe lighten it some?

[William Dickson]

Thanks for that Diane, i just managed to get the one shot, I was handheld with IS on and, as you said, when i looked, there was slight blurring, maybe i need to learn my technique a little better as i never take a tripod with me, unless i am standing in a hide, but mostly i am walking, looking for birds

[Diane Miller]

Much as I love the freedom of moving freely and shooting handheld, it is common that IQ will suffer. It pays to do a lot of experimenting to learn your limits.

You will certainly see some spectacular images here that are handheld at low shutter speeds. There are some tricks to increase your success rate, such as shooting a burst -- one may be sharper than the others if it catches that brief moment between a slight up and down shake, using a kneepod or a treepod, etc.

But the freedom of the hunt is great fun!

[Steve Kaluski]

Hi William, people who know me, know the 7D is not my favourite camera body and the reason being, unless you are bang on with the exposure, it is not as forgiving as other bodies IMHO, although I have never shot with this body I might add, just viewed truck loads of images, however Morkel another Wildlife mod has got some pointers in using this body, so you could PM him too.

The image is too small for any real evaluation and so you need to take advantage of posting much bigger, max width 1200px, height 900px, however you need to position the subject a lot more to the left and so the bird is looking more into frame. I like the head angle and seeing the back with the nice plumage. An old rule of thumb was your SS should be the equivalent or more than your lens i.e. 500mm lens, SS 1/500, but with modern cameras now you can go lower, but not advisable for obvious reasons, therefore you need to crank up that ISO to gain more SS.

cheers
Steve