Bluebird Portrait

[Caleb Royer]

I had to set up a blind made out of 5 square bales of hay, a picnic table, and an old tarp with a hole in the front
to get this photo:o soon after I bout a hide.
I was about 5 feet away from the Bluebird and I cropped it almost to actual pixels.
Sorry about the angle of the sun I will try to catch that next time.:o

Weather: Blue skies with a few clouds
Date: 3/18/09 around 9:00AM
Camera: Canon 40D
Lens: Canon EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM @ 400mm
Aperture: f/5.6
Shutter Speed: 1/125
ISO: 100
Resolution: 960x640
I have some more photos of him and some of his female that I will probably post later.

Critiques Are Much Appreciated:)

[Dan Walker]

The heavy crop introduced some noise into the BG, nothing a round or 2 of noise reduction cant fix. I would clone out the object in the top of the frame, or if you could have, moved up a little to eliminate it. I might also recrop this as a verticle.

[Doug Brown]

Getting this close to your subject makes for some exciting photographic opportunities. As you point out, the sun angle is not great. Moving your blind should cure that. If you're going for that head-on look, push your ISO higher and go for more DOF. I would clone out the dark horizontal area above the bird.

[Fabs Forns]

This could have ade a nice vertical and I'd get rid of the darker area also. Thanks for sharing!!

[Caleb Royer]

Here is the redone photo.
I did not save the original so I could not give it a vertical crop.
Should I save all of my original photos?

[Doug Brown]

I save all of my RAW files Caleb (good images only).