Blue-gray Gnatcatcher

[KevinStohlgren]

Hello,

New to the forum and new to bird photography so all hints, tips, comments, etc. are obviously welcome. I recently purchased a telephoto and have been out practicing a lot, as well as working on my post processing skills.

Here is a Blue-gray Gnatcatcher from a few days ago that I was pretty happy with compositionally and exposure-wise. I have re-edited this image many times though, trying to get it to my liking.

Sony A300, Sony 70-400 (@400), 1/320, f/7.1, aperture priority (+2/3 exposure compensation), handheld.

Cropped out a few twigs at upper right, Gaussian blur on background to smooth some sharp OOF elements, (curves, selective color, brightness, and saturation adjustments, all very slight), USM. There are some shadows on the head from some branches above but they don't really bother me and I didn't like any attempts I made to deal with them.

Thanks for looking. -Kevin

[Jeff Cashdollar]

Kevin,

Well you might be new to the forum but the photography is overall well done. Composition is very subject but IMO the subject is too tight in the frame and basically in the middle of image. Might consider rule of thirds and other composition methods to enhance the subject (see Education & Tutorial Forum thread on Rule of Thirds). That is what you want to do, not just show a subject but do so in a way that balances the frame. If the subject is too tight, the eye tends to look at the edges of the frame and not the beautiful Gnatcatcher.

Good exposure techs and the feather detail in nicely on display. The post processing looks good to me, natural not overdone - you are on the right track. Show us some more, keep em coming.

[Kerry Perkins]

Kevin, big welcome to BPN and the eager to learn forum! We look forward to lots more from you. This is a lovely first post with excellent exposure and color rendition. Detail looks ok, would have been sharper with a tripod at this shutter speed. I like the pose and the nice eye contact. I would probably go ahead and clone out that one branch at the top of the perch. Love the colors of the background, nice compliment to the colors on the bird. Well done, keep them coming!

[KevinStohlgren]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I am aware of the rule of thirds but the tight frame was intentional. The majority of the branches of the tree this bird was in were above and to the right of the bird. So my thoughts in the field were to try and eliminate those distracting elements. I didn't feel that these branches would add any interest to the photo or composition. I then cropped slightly tighter in post to eliminate a few more branches and try to get the eye in upper right third but still give the bird a little room to the right (probably not enough though). I could add some canvas (and background of course) to get the bird in the lower left third area but it seems to me it might give a feeling of too much empty space. If there was a more interesting background I would certainly see having a wider view improving the image. I will play around with it some more though to see if I can improve it.

Regarding the shutter speed, I definitely should have opened up the aperture or upped the ISO, which was at 400 (or both) to get a higher shutter speed but this bird came into clear view for only a few frames and I didn't have time to think about changing any settings (and I didn't have my tripod on me at the time). With experience hopefully some of these things will become second nature.

One thing that bothers me about the photo is the noise that creeped in on the lower leg and the black eyebrow when I sharpened (maybe not as evident in this post as it is viewed larger on my computer). I could have not sharpened these areas or run noise reduction on them but I don't want to lose detail, particularly in the eyebrow.