I watched this Robin eating Toyon berries and shot it at 30 frames per second on my Sony A1 and 600mm GM lens. Cropped heavily to get a close up portrait. Had to shoot multiple shots to get mid air berry in birds beak.
general critique
Sony A1 and 600mm GM lens at f 4 and 1/2500 sec at ISO400
Oh what timing! Perfect. Nice detail, too, right down to those eyelashes. The colors and background look good and not overly saturated. The berry does though. Reds are so easy to get out of control. Also, the crop looks…awkward. It’s not a full-body and it’s not a portrait, but in between and I don’t know that this says deliberate to me. Sweet catchlight in the eye, btw.
Beautiful facial detail. Perfect timing with the berry. Probably wouldn’t have thought about it without Kris’s comment, but I wonder how this would look with a tighter or looser crop. The setting and background look very attractive, so a looser crop might work.
Here is a close crop as suggested. Thanks for comments. Also the color of berry was as shot with AWB and no increase in saturation just early morning daylight. I think I like the close crop better.
Larry
Wonderful photo! I really like this closer crop as it is unusual and really tells the story of the berry as much as the bird. Well done.
