This male Ruffed Grouse was photographed from a blind near his drumming log. 7D, 500 mm f/4, 1/20, f/4.5, ISO 400, tripod, nr on background, cropped from a horizontal. All comments are welcome and appreciated.
This male Ruffed Grouse was photographed from a blind near his drumming log. 7D, 500 mm f/4, 1/20, f/4.5, ISO 400, tripod, nr on background, cropped from a horizontal. All comments are welcome and appreciated.

cool! grat colors and nice details just wish the BG was more uniform
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Absolutely love the substrate of the moss here!
Exposure looks perfect and the OOF focus stuff on the left matches the birds breast perfectly. I think I might have made that selectively a bit more OOF however as it wants to compete for where my eye go and takes a but away from the subject...or I guess sort of conflicts with it?
I might so a QM and sharpen the head and eye a tad more.
Believe me..I'd still be tickled pink if I saw this never mind created the image :)
Last edited by Jim Fenton; 05-12-2011 at 07:46 PM.
Steve
I liked how you used the bgkd and foreground to give a sense of habitat. The OOF tree along LHS compliments colors in grouse's breast
Interesting pose and HA. Given it was 1/20 - nice sharp details
The photo probably made the trek to the blind worthwhile
What a nice image, and the moss covered drumming log adds a nice punch of colours. I like the BG as is, and good comp. 1/20s...you could have raised the ISO just to give that much more SS.
Very nice detail and exp...Love the carpet. Would like to see the ISO a touch higher for SS
Good angle Steve, and I like the surrounding FG he is standing on. The BG doesnt worry me either, and agree, a higher ISO would have helped a bit more.
Super pose and a lovely looking specimen . BG look OK to me, ditto the a higher ISO
Chris Kotze
For me, the mossy perch makes a great image much better. A dumb question: if the iso and ss were higher, how would that have improved this image. Thanks for sharing
Thanks for the comments folks!
Tommy: Yours is not a dumb question.A higher ISO would, of course, have allowed me to shoot at a higher shutter speed (while also introducing more digital noise that I would have to deal with). Shooting at a higher ss would certainly have been more convenient and would generally increase the proportion of "keeper" images that were not degraded by motion blur - and I would almost always prefer to shoot at higher shutter speeds. But, having said that, would a higher ss have improved this particular image? - the answer is no. The original RAW file is tack sharp around the eye. I should also note that because I knew I would be shooting in low light conditions, I used a cable release to fire the shutter.
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Lovely shot, Steve. Like you, I prefer to use mechanical means (cable release, for example) rather than high ISO to give me a stable image.
Thanks Steve. Very helpful in furthering my photographic education. I do appreciate your extra effort on my behalf