I think this is a nice pose of a quite common bird in my area. I met it while hiking in the upper desert in south Israel, and it was just running around and 'flirting' with me.
In any case, I thought I'd share and see if anyone has suggestions as to composition and such. Sadly, I had my camera set on JPEG, but I'm not sure that in such a picture much was lost.
Canon 550D, 300mm f/4L, ISO 100, 1/800, 7.1
In PS I cropped out a few distracting branches from the lower left which covered some of the shadow, some distracting stones that were in focus, and cleaned up the beak/head area a bit. Did levels/curves and sharpening and highlighted the eye a bit which was a bit too dark for the details that were there.
Any and all comments very much appreciated. Thanks!
I think the look back pose is perfectly fine, I like it alot. I see nothing wrong with your composition. The challenge here is the lighting....looks like the sun is almost directly overhead and the light is somewhat harsh as a result. You might work with the shadows/highlights adjustment as well as a levels adjustment to help bring the midtones back under control so to speak. Also under the selective color adjustment you can add a little black to the neutrals.
Interesting bird, sort of reminds me of a Roadrunner. Keep 'em coming:)
Hello Arnon, you have a nice capture of the bird and the look-back pose works for me. I agree with Joel in that the lighting was not optimal. The background is very bright and steals the eye away from the bird. The eye follows light. I would suggest selecting the bg only and using a levels or curves adjustment to bring the brightness down. Shooting in RAW format would have given you much better control of the exposure in post processing.
"It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart, and head." - Henri Cartier Bresson
Thanks Joel and Kerry for the suggestions. The shot was taken, as you could tell, with the sun in full force above. I'll fiddle with the shadows/highlight and also try the curves on the BG (a bit difficult to select because the bird's colors merge somewhat with that of the BG) and see if I can smooth the lighting a bit. Thanks again for the helpful comments.
Crested Lark (nice pose?)
