Bad feather day would be more accurate I suppose. It may look like this Greenie slept all wrong but it was a stiff breeze blowing from behind him that caused the muss.
Well, I'm having trouble with the photo upload. I'll go read a little and see what I'm doing wrong. I usually don't have problems and I've checked the obvious (made sure the gallery it's in isn't private or password protected, checked that the height is under 800 pixels). Let me try one more thing. If it doesn't work I'll be back when I'm smarter.
Ok, it's happier now. Not sure why, I really didn't change anything but I'm glad it decided to show.
Here's some of the exif info; Nikon D5000, 70-300mmVR lens @300mm, F11 @ 1/125 sec, ISO 400, exposure comp. +1.0EV.
Thanks for looking.
Last edited by Jay Johnson; 03-11-2010 at 11:13 PM.
Hi - see it now - a Big warm welcome to the BPN family.
Like the pose and the title fits well :)
Might have swapped some DOF for some more shutter speed - I will stop down quite a bit when there is nothing in the BG as long as I can keep the SS at a reasonable level (Bumping ISO if required)
Looks sharp, Good HA and eye contact - a little more room up front for my own personal tastes. Looks just a tad contrasty on my screen - could just be my screen .
I like the pose and those raised feathers, good bg and exposure form camera looks fine. Image is a little dark but might be from processing?
Agree with lance on settings, no need to stop down so much, it just brings the bg into play and increase chances of motion !!! Tack sharp image Looking forward to the next one !!
Thanks for the replies everybody. I appreciate the time y'all took to try and help me out and I was frankly surprised at how beneficial it was to look at my photo through other people's eyes. What a great learning tool.
A few thoughts on your thoughts;
I see now that the contrast and color saturation are overdone, not sure why it wasn't obvious to me before. I do tend to go for bold and/or bolder colors in a lot of my photos but it's apparent that there are times where it's best to strive for realism. I will tone it down a couple clicks.
I had no idea the shutter speed on this shot was so slow. I was shooting in aperture priority on a bright day, and all the photos from the same time were minimum 1/400. A cloud had covered the sun but I didn't realize it changed the light so much. Definitely a reminder to be vigilant to changing conditions.
I love to shove my lens into the 'up close and personal' range and balancing that with the value of leaving space for animate subjects to look or move into the frame is something I struggle with. I know I should do it but I really like the subject as large as possible and I cringe as it gets smaller as I pull back. In the absence of an interesting BG I mostly end up with shots like this one. Plus, this is my longest lens and I'm not a bird or wildlife photographer. I don't go looking for them, I just shoot 'em when I run into 'em and when I do getting close enough for a good shot is usually a problem. In this case I was fairly close and this image isn't cropped at all horizontally, it's all the room there i left myself.
I think my username is going to be changed soon to Jay Johnson, which makes a lot of sense since it's my name. Nice to meet you all. I'll leave you with another shot of the same Greenie taken just a bit later in a lull in the wind.
Bad Hair Day?
