Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
On a bright, sunny morning strolling along a beach on Long Island, NY, I managed to get this shot while watching a nesting Common Tern. I took many images of this little family, but this one stood out to me with the baby looking up with sleepy admiration to his parent.
Specific Feedback
I’m looking for editing techniques that could help improve the limitations of my telephoto lens (Fuji XC 70-230). I cropped in heavily at about 80% and used Lightroom’s Denoise feature to clean up the resulting pixelation. Wildlife always makes me wish I had a lens with more reach! I compared this with Enhance feature as well and didn’t notice much difference. Also open to any other editing recommendations!
Technical Details
Image was taken on a Fuji x-t30 with the XC 70-230 lens
f/6.7
ISO 100
230mm
1/1000 sec
Hi Jon: I really like your subject matter and the poses you got, particularly the youngster. It looks like you handled the limitations of your lens well as you have good detail in the birds. I don’t know of any way to overcome lens limitations that to figure out how to get closer to your subjects. In general, sitting still and letting them come to you works pretty well, with or without camouflage. Years ago there was a woman on this site that took bird images with her 200 mm lens and posted some fantastic images. I know, if I sit on a stool in my back yard the birds will come close enough for your setup (using a tripod also helps because the act of lifting the camera can spook them).
The only suggestion I’d make in terms of processing is to crop the image differently. There seems to be an awful lot of canvas above and below the birds that doesn’t convey much and I think it could use a bit more canvas on the left if there’s nothing too ugly over there.
Hi Jonathan, really sweet moment captured. Love the look of the chick gazing up at the parent. The chick looks pretty soft to my eyes especially in the large version so cropping in more may exacerbate that. Even though I agree composition wise a tighter crop makes sense. Your processing sounds fine to me using the new Denoise feature.
