Three cracking shots
My thoughts are like the others - that bit of white something would have to go - over the last ten years of digital use I've come to realise that the difference between a good shot and a ruined good shot is leaving in some annoying bit of rubbish, water mark, light reflection etc
I now see these sorts of annoyances immediately and they are the first thing I remove before I see to the main subject! As soon as my eye hits on something and wonders what it is - it has to go - I don;t want anything to detract from the main business! Its made us very careful too of where and what background the camera sees when we set up for mobile hide photography ........ I could probably go back to some of my older shots and nit pick everyone but as the years and shots have increased I've got extremely critical about what is in the final pic: I even have the thought process that if a certain something cannot be eliminated (gardened) out physically before taking a shot - then I will already be thinking about how to minimise or remove completely when the shot has been taken!
The other thing I notice is the perch for the nuthatch is a big branch and wonder if you have placed this or are just using something naturally in situ which you have no control over. If its a perch you have placed it would be better to have the whole branch in focus ie: on the level plane with your camera - if when you do that the nutchatch is facing you and not side on then find another branch that will put the bird exactly where you want it - don't give the bird a choice - give it one obvious landing spot! The trunk of this branch is too big (IMHO) to be out of focus - smaller thinner stuff out of focus is ok - but something this size I find distracting - I think if you printed this pic out at A4 you will see what I'm getting at ........
The blue tit I reckon is the result of a very clean brown background against a blue bird - the camera has well and truly locked on focus to the bird and a big depth of field like F11 or F16 can cause this against a clear background - sometimes (if you have time to think as in when its a set up and you see this happening) it could be worth turning the F-stop down a bit 16 to 14 or 11 and 11 down to 9 and see if that 'softens' the 'edges' of the bird?
Other than that they are three cracking shots which I wouldn't mind having in my 'stable'
Pauline
PS Like Stu says - if you can reposition that nuthatch I would crop it to 'landscape' format - that would give it room to look into (and this is a big failing with me - I'm still blown away by my big lens and crop way too tight cos I like seeing feather detail!!) and get rid of the out of focus branch which is dominating the pic at the min!
Linear Mode
