It was about 90 minutes before sundown when I captured this image of the Long-billed Dowitcher. I had chased this bird around the pond for a while before getting some good shots. This was taken July 19th at Montlake Fill in Seattle.
It was taken with the Canon 7D 400MM L 5.6 with ISO 800 f5.6 and 1/2,500 in aperture priority.
I'm new to photography and would appreciate any and all feedback.
Hey Doug,
nice bird, those guys are one of my favourites :)
I like how the sun is almost perfectly behind you, it makes the bird look very warm. It would have been nice to get more of a head angle towards you, maybe try and move a little to your left in a situation like this. Also a lower angle is always nice as long as the background is pleasing, although it looks like you did get pretty low for this already. There's also a lot of reflection on the beak which is a little distracting. The reflection of the bird on the water is awesome!
Very nice first post! Looking forward to seeing more from you :)
Very nice start on BPN Doug. The reflection is compelling, the background is nice and smooth and the light is warm. I might wish for a better head angle and better detail on the bird's head. Also toning down the highlights on the beak would reduce the distraction that it creates. I might also look at eliminating the blackish streaks in the water in the ULC.
Welcome to BPN Doug!! Good critiques above, which I mostly agree with (especially head angle and bright bill highlights). I love the great warm light, and the ripples around the subject are pretty neat. If it is within your post-processing ethics I would eliminate the blotches in the water (the one between the bill reflections at ripples' edge, and a paler one behind the neck.)
As for the dark streaks in ULC, I'm not sure I would completely remove them (although I'd likely try just to see the result), but I would experiment in toning them down to make them less dominant. A lower angle would be great, but keep in mind the reflection would be reduced in importance and thus yield a different type of image. If time permits you could take some of each.
Lastly, please kindly send Alfred Forns a PM for him to change your user name to your first and last names as this is how we identify oursleves on BPN.
Enjoy your time here, and looking forward to more from you (including critiques!)
Daniel very much covered every aspect. I will add that we hope we can help you improve your photography and that you can feel right at home with us here :)
Don't be shy and give others some feedback, you can learn more critiquing others than you do reading critiques to your work.
See you around :)
That's a good idea to try to be at closer to a 90 degree angle to the bird. I'm not sure I really could have on this one. There were several other birds around and they were all going back in forth. I just had a short opening where none of the other birds were too close to get in the picture of disturb the water.
I'd definitely like to try some shots from the ground in the future for a different perspective.
I really don't know how to remove those highlights on the bill. Is that something Lightroom could do or would I need Photoshop for that?
It sure can be tough isolating just one bird from a flock!:)
In Lightroom you can do certain localized adjustments such as exposure, but since they are blown you would need Photoshop (even PS Elements) for the particular task of taming those bill highlights. It is a job that calls for the patch and clone tools - more specialized refinement tools.
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