Songthrush having breakfast

[EzhilSuresh]

On a recent trip to Yorkshire Dales, I saw this Songthrush digging out worms for breakfast. I'd plenty of time to take some nice shots of this bird. All I'd to do was to maintain a decent distance and wait for the poses.

Canon 7d, 100-400 L IS, 400mm, f5.6, 1/800, ISO 400, handheld, no exposure compensation, evaluative metering, DPP to convert RAW, no post-processing

[Randy Stout]

Ezhil:

A big welcome to BPN. You will find this a great place to learn and grow as a nature photographer.

Its great when you get a cooperative subject.

The prey item is a plus, as is the small mound he is standing on so you get at least a partial view of the feet.

Some folks don't like square crops, and if you have more canvas to the left, you could easily convert this to a more traditional landscape crop.

In a perfect world, I would prefer not to have the dark spot in the background right behind the head.

The image does look like it could use a bit more sharpening for web presentation, and I might lighten the image 1/4 stop or so.

Look forward to more.

Cheers

Randy

[Doug Brown]

Welcome to BPN Ezhil! I think Randy hit the important points with his critique. A little more sharpening (the 100-400 doesn't perform at its best wide open), a little brightening, spot removal, and some additional canvas will help this image quite a bit.

[Paul Randall]

Agree entirely with the above comments, welcome to the site too

[EzhilSuresh]

Many thanks for all your valuable remarks.

I decided to crop the image as this was shot in a cattle farm and the ground was not pretty. I've now reduced the cropping, added 1/3 stop and sharpened a little. I can see the difference in the photo. Regarding the removal of black spot behind the bird's head, I got to learn to tinker the photo in some software other than DPP.