Well, glad you took the plunge! This looks real good Jacqui. The background is nice and even and blurred well, the composition is very good. I might be temped to try one or 2 things. Try a crop a little off the left up to the beginning of the dark (shadowed) bark on the bottom left, for some reason my eye goes to that dark spot. Maybe also a touch of unsharp mask but you would have to see if that does anything for you. You have a little room at the top to play also if you want a little more bird in the frame.
Looks like you did real well Jacqui, hope to see many more from you and your garden!
Last edited by George DeCamp; 01-03-2008 at 12:57 PM.
Welcome Jacqui! It looks like you have a great garden to use for bird photography and your lens combination is one that has been a favorite of mine for quite a while. The Green Finch is a new bird for me...love the dusting of yellows across the bird. :) You certainly posted a fine image to start with and I hope to see more of your work!
Hi Jacqui and welcome. How's the water? I like this one a lot. It is way sharp and nicely composed. Unless the image I am seeing is a re-post, I disagree with George; I would not crop anything off the left side as the bird needs that room. I would take some off the top. If it fits with your personal ethics, you might consider re-working the light area in the upper right corner with either a Quick Mask or the Clone Stamp at about 80% opacity. Same goes for the seed husks. If you work large, they would be easy to eliminate.
Keep up the good work. And later and love, artie
ps: Sort of like this:
Last edited by Arthur Morris; 01-03-2008 at 07:25 PM.
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Jacqui,
I'm sorry about the whole "France" thing, but it looks like you are making the best of it.
As mentioned great background, looks sharp to me and is well exposed.
This is not a nit, but a suggestion.
The background looks relatively bright. If you have a good distance between your subject and the background, fill flash will allow you to stop down the aperture so the foreground area of the perch would be in focus.
I like the foreground elements to be in focus, however not everyone will agree on that point.
You can stop down the aperture and leave the shutter speed as it is. This will allow the background to be rendered darker (the ambient light has been reduced to the point of under-exposure). Use the flash to properly expose the subject and give it a little pop.
No real rules. We use digital cameras. Experiment.
Try different Fstops to see how it affects the fore and backgrounds. Try keeping the same shutter speed and changing the aperture and see how bright or dark the background looks. And last but not least try different flash level settings.
Looks wonderful. Much easier to make it look good when working with lots of pixels. Now, before you make a display print, you can use the Patch Tool to get rid of the husk (?) just below the eye. Then you might make a Quick Mask of the o-o-f and slightly hot area of the perch in the foreground, multipy it, and perhaps use a contrast mask on the layer: Unsharp Mask: 15/65/0 or thereabouts. Lastly, I would get rid of the little brown thing in the cavity--it looks like a seed...
As for the flash, I do not think that it would have helped this image at all. Flash ruins many more digital images than it helps, but like the bad little boy, when it is good it can be really, really good...
later and love, artie
BIRDS AS ART Blog: great info and lessons, lots of images with our legendary BAA educational Captions; we will not sell you junk. 30+ years of long lens experience/e-mail with gear questions.
BIRDS AS ART Online Store: we will not sell you junk. 35 years of long lens experience. Please e-mail with gear questions.
Check out the new SONY e-Guide and videos that I did with Patrick Sparkman here. Ten percent discount for BPN members,
Green Finch
Posting Permissions
