Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
This was taken in a town mill pond, that is fenced in but I got as low as I could without jumping the fence.
I am eager to learn so willing to hear any suggestions.
1/500 sec @6.3, iso 2500, Sony A7riv, 200-600mm @ 315mm
Well first let me say I’m jealous of your opportunity with these birds. They just flap and fly away whenever I get near one. Do you have more room around the bird or is this all? You didn’t talk about processing so it’s tough to respond in that sense, but more space top and bottom would help I think since the area the bird is standing in is quite cluttered. For me when I do a bird portrait, I usually try for a clearer view without so much environmental information. With this much in frame I would go wider to make it more important in terms of telling the story about where the bird lives and how it behaves. So if you don’t have more canvas, you could try a square crop to eliminate the bubbles and ripples on the far left. Cropped this way it looks accidental if you know what I mean. Sharpness looks good here and darn if it wouldn’t just turn your way a tiny bit. Birds!!
Hi, Kathryn. Firstly, let me say this is a fine photo. I love the reflection, and the techs appear to be good. Like @Kris_Smith, I think I would try to give the bird more room at the top and bottom, if you have it. This feels a bit tight, to me. Nice shot.
Hi Kathryn, nice catch and I love reflection shots like this one. Exposure and detail on the bird look really fine and I love seeing that red eye so well. Agree with more room on top and bottom and I could see looking at what desaturating the greens some would do. A head turn more toward us would be nice but this is still a mighty fine capture.
Beautiful detail in the heron and I love the reflection, Kathryn. The greens don’t bother me, though I could see bringing them and the bright browns behind the bird down a bit. Here’s another vote for more room top and bottom if you have it. I started dout with the traditional big glass and when I went to the zooms it took some time to teach myself that I now had real control over framing and could loosen up the composition-it’s much easier to crop than to add canvas and with that camera you have plenty of pixels for cropping.
Good for you for getting so low! That takes great discipline to consistently do that whenever possible. This is a
I tend to crop too tightly as I love seeing the details I can capture on my screen and this group is slowly helping me to step back and look at the bigger picture of the habitat when possible. Having the subject so close to the edge is usually a distraction as I, as the viewer, am left wondering, what is missing just around the subject.
Thank you so much to everyone that replied to my photo. I will practice leaving more space around my subject and looking for backgrounds that are not distracting. I will admit cropping too tightly has been a problem for me. I have tried photoshop’s new AI program that will add to the photo and it is amazing. I wanted to salvage some photos that I really liked, but I would rather learn to photograph properly. Thank you so much for your feed back.
