A patient photographer I am not, but I am trying:o
It took about 1/2 an hour (which by coincidence is the limit of my patience) for this silhouetted Australian Pelican to do something of interest. Finally it gave a big yawn (which, also by coincidence, I had done several times already:)) and I snapped into action firing off a few shots before I gave up and looked for another subject.
My talent is to know when a subject has given me the best picture I am going to get from them.
This was the case with this picture, as the bird left its perch and flew slowly towards the sun as I was leaving.:cool:
Hopefully I will become more patient with age because it is definitely something a bird photographer (or any photographer) should have in his/her bag of tricks.:D
Happy snapping, Paul Randall
Canon 30D 400mm f5.6 L iso 100 1/2000 f11 manual mode, handheld
Very nice image Paul, I like the composition and the color.
The yawn was really worth the wait. You have several dust spots
(dust-bunnies) in the LH part mid-image, that can be cleaned in PS.
Congrats!
The "dust bunnies" are actually bugs (the air was thick with them on this particular evening).
I decided to leave them but you are probably right that they look too much like dust spots and I should PS them.
I appreciate the challenges of being patient. Not my strong suite either.
After looking at your image for a while, I felt that the composition might be tweaked a bit.
I have to work at composition, and am always trying to improve my grasp of what works best. Very personal matter, but some basics seem to work consistently.
With that in mind, I tweaked your image to move the sun to the LUC, in the interest of balancing the image.
The movement was not perfectly executed, but I do think it shows a compositional option.
Paul
You could have done the same with the sun as indicated by Randy by stepping to your left. A far better option than doing it in photoshop, but I guess Randy was just indicating the comp improvement not the fact that you can fix later.
I love the silhouette and I only wish that the lower mandible was not merged with the body. It is a powerful image with lots of potential and revisiting the spot in the optimal conditions will reward you in the future. :)
Akos is correct, I was not advocating fixing compositional errors in photoshop, rather I was evaluating the image and trying to see what could make it stronger. Next time, if you like this composition better, step to the left!
I would have loved to have stepped left guys but I was at the top of a small mound which meant if I went left I would have lost the silhouette completely. Thanks for taking time out to do a repost Randy.
I never thought about moving the sun but it does help the comp. heaps.
A patient photographer?
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