Practicing at the Bird Feeder: White Breasted NutHatch
Any suggestions at all will be appreciated. I am hoping to get more familiar with "settings." Haven't done any editing in PS5: but I loaded the software! I've got to go slow and steady to figure out just one new thing a day! Thanks, Ann
Ann, I see you've done a few posts before this one so am I right in assuming you have a new camera or is it that you're totally new to photography?
I think you're off to a good start here. Generally, with birds (or any other living thing) we, as viewers, prefer to see more space in front of an animal instead of behind it. In our minds, we see the bird taking its next step and here it would be walking right out of the frame. Try to keep in mind that you want his eye/head in one of the ROT's positions MOST of the time. (If you don't know what that is look in the educational section under tutorials and James Shadle explains it all very well!)
One other thing to concentrate on is the histogram on your camera - make sure you're reviewing it when you create the image. You don't want to see any spikes on either end - that means either your blacks are too black or your whites are too white - and both will render areas of your photograph with no visible detail. You have a small spike on the white (right) side and a pretty big spike on the darkest tones (left) side. Once you start to get familiar with Photoshop you'll be able to adjust these by shooting in RAW and recovering that data loss there.
My best advice is to keep practicing! You're off to a good start. Whenever you have time look at the other images here in the ETL forum and read the comments - you'll hear the same things over and over again that are the basics and you can learn a ton of stuff very quickly this way. Don't be afraid to ask questions, either...that's why we're here!
hey Ann, what a cool bird to have in your yard! beautiful background, and love the bird with his sharp toes, but would like to see more space in front of him, it feels a little like he is bumping his nose on the bottom of the picture.
Hi Ann! The bird is nice and sharp but I agree with Jules and Pat that he needs more space to look/head into.
If you haven't taken advantage of the educational section here yet, I highly recommend it. I am still spending lots of time there and trying to soak it all in. It's a huge help and fun to try all of the guidelines/suggestions/techniques and see if you can actually do these things in real life :D
Hi Ann, good points from Julie. In this you could have experimented and shot this vertical. As you told me previously that you are still learning your camera, I would suggest finding a pond in your area and practise with all sorts of shots. Sit quietly by the waters edge and choose your comps in camera. Leave space in front of your subjects to swim or fly into, and also enough space around. After each image as you start off, look at your histogram to see if you are exposing correctly. After a while, and with no one around, or maybe with a photographer friend, you can casually capture images with no pressure. Yes we all delete images after a shoot, but you will come away with keepers too. Have fun.
Practicing at the Bird Feeder: White Breasted NutHatch
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