A few shots of a Male Reed Bunting

[riggy]

A few shots of a male Reed Bunting




Taken on a Sony A200 with Tamron 70 -300 lens
Any comments most welcome

Thanks

Paul

[Stinky Bob]

This has so made me laugh, not because of the pictures as I think they are cracking but because a couple of weeks ago I took some pictures of what I thought was dodgy looking sparrow in a willow tree by the River Wye, I thought at the time there was something strange about a sparrow being in a willow tree by the river anyhow I deleted all the pictures I had and while not as good as yours they weren't bad for me. So, great pictures and thanks for solving the mystery of my dodgy sparrow.

[riggy]

Originally Posted by Stinky Bob

This has so made me laugh, not because of the pictures as I think they are cracking but because a couple of weeks ago I took some pictures of what I thought was dodgy looking sparrow in a willow tree by the River Wye, I thought at the time there was something strange about a sparrow being in a willow tree by the river anyhow I deleted all the pictures I had and while not as good as yours they weren't bad for me. So, great pictures and thanks for solving the mystery of my dodgy sparrow.

Thats why I never delete anything just buy a bigger external hard drive

[acherontia]

One of the most important things to look at when presenting an image is how to crop - if you can't take the image as you want it.

The 'Rule of thirds' (look it up on line) is a good starter.

A love of the subject matter is highly important - and provided you want to be good at loving your subject you will progress on your own by being self critical.

Acher

PS - Reed Buntings are lovely subjects - aren't they`?

[Geoff F]

Yes I would crop some of those a little tighter. The bird is looking rather lost amongst all that background.

The image of the bird looking straight ahead doesn't work well. Neither do any of my photos from the same angle. I think it is something to do with the conversion from 3D to 2D which compresses the depth and gives a flat result.

I think a little bit of selective sharpening, on the bird not the background, would help.

But to give any more suggestions, we really need to know your camera settings. And did you use a tripod?

[riggy]

Originally Posted by Geoff F

Yes I would crop some of those a little tighter. The bird is looking rather lost amongst all that background.

The image of the bird looking straight ahead doesn't work well. Neither do any of my photos from the same angle. I think it is something to do with the conversion from 3D to 2D which compresses the depth and gives a flat result.

I think a little bit of selective sharpening, on the bird not the background, would help.

But to give any more suggestions, we really need to know your camera settings. And did you use a tripod?

Sorry about the delay in getting back to this - work and kids birthdays getting in the way!

The settings were shutter speed 1000 F5.6 hand held. Editing was done with Picassa then Neat Image

I took some more Reed Bunting pics at Potteric Carr yesterday and have played with them in Elements 5 ( i have not re-sharpened the pics after re-sizing).

The two origional pics



Setting f5 1/640s ISO 400 Sony a200 with tamron 70 - 300mm lens. Hand held leaning on the hide shelf.

The first pic re-worked




For the second pic I have removed the top branch as well as trying to sharpen in Elements



I then toned down the background



All croping done in Picasa and resized with Pic Resizer for uploading

Any comments/suggestion welcome and would it be worthwhile doing something simaliar with the origional pics in this post