The male is easy to identify because he’s …well, you know…a red-winged black bird. The female - not so much. But I think she is beautiful.
Any
Is this a composite: No
Canon 60D, Canon 70-300mm IS USM zoom, f/8, 1/500 sec., ISO 1000, Av Mode, Hand Held. Processed in ACR and PSE 2020 for exposure, sharpness and NR. Also lightly processed in Topaz De-noise.
That she is! Don’t you love their different calls? We have a ton here on the river by the house. In summer they dart in and out of the trees on the banks. Such lively birds.
The edge of light on the left is a little weird, maybe give that a wee crop. The branches frame her nicely, but too bad about the brick wall. What can you do?
Hi Terry! Yes, she is very beautiful! I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a female Redwing Blackbird before! Or maybe I have and didn’t know it. I really love the lighting and the tree behind her. And the bird really stands out , very nice shot!
Thanks, Kris. I thought I had that left side cropped, and didn’t notice it until you mentioned it! I was too intent on wishing that brick wall wasn’t there. Darn birds just won’t land where I want them to! These birds these days…what’re ya gonna do?
Hi, Vanessa. Frankly, I wasn’t sure what she was at first, either! But I figured that’s what she must be because a lot of males are coming to my feeders, and she was hanging with them. Thank you!
A very nice shot of this lady, Terry. The bird and perch are excellent. With the 70-300 you might try a wider aperture than f/8 to get a softer background. I use f/8 at 600 mm, but the longer focal length means less depth of field. I suspect you’d get enough with your lens wide open, whatever that aperture is and that will throw your background more out of focus.
Thanks, Dennis. I used to shoot everything wide open - or nearly so - 5.6 or 6.7. But it seemed I wasn’t getting everything in focus on larger animals, like the foxes, so I moved to f/8. But on smaller targets like birds, you’re probably right. I’ll try that going forward,
Good job on detail and pose. The repost with the vertical comp works better. If you are going to be using set ups with perches that you arrange, think very carefully about your background. Place the set up in an area where your background is going to be as out of focus is possible. Then be sure you don’t shoot above F8 and less if you have the opportunity. You just want the subject and maybe some of the perch to be in focus. In this image, I would crop away the out of focus branch in the upper right hand area. You want the amount of distraction to be as limited as possible.
Interesting light on the bird, and it appears pretty sharp, but the colors are distorted by bringing up contrast. A F Red-winged Blackbird is basically brown – at least the ones I’ve seen.
I would select the blue-purple area on the right and lower its saturation and probably bend the color to something more compatible with the tree. That would let me not crop so tightly from that side. I would take more off the left and bottom, though.
A wider aperture would have been better here, with the distracting light on the tree trunk.
@David_Schoen Thanks, David. That particular perch is not one I arranged. It’s a shrub growing there, and where she happened to be sitting. But I get your point.
@Diane_Miller Not sure what happened with the colors, Diane. I actually didn’t add any contrast to the shot - just brightened the bird a bit. I’ll go back and reprocess it and see what I come up with. I definitely want it to be right because I like this shot.
Did you let the software do anything like an Auto tone correction? That could increase contrast hugely, which would amp up colors. Sometime that is a good correction and sometimes it is a bad one. It’s something I would never recommend.
