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Anything you would have done differently?
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Image Description
These two European Goldfinches engaged in brief combat when a challenger tried to get onto a bird feeder claimed by the defender. I took this image last month at a photo hide in Dumfries & Galloway, Scotland.
Technical Details
Sony a1, Sony 200-600mm at 600mm, 1/2000th at f/6.3, manual exposure, ISO 4000.
My first reaction was wow! Stunning! Great action and colours. My eyes were immediately drawn to the bird’s eyes and heads. I don’t know these birds so didn’t know if this was aggressive or courting behavior. When I look more at the photo I am distracted by the out-of-focus wing on the right side of the photo. I am not sure if there has been some processing to the wing or background but it seems to have an unnatural look, particularly around the edges.
Although not ideal I wouldn’t mind the out of focus wing if it looked more natural (sorry I cannot be more specific).
Overall, this is a great capture. Must have been fun to see.
Thanks, Robena. Glad you like it. Actually, I did very little processing of this image. It is pretty much as I captured it. The wing blur is either because it was moving faster than the 1/2000th speed could stop, or a bit out of focus. It wasn’t that far away from my lens, so it could be that with the focal point on the heads, at f/6.3 the wing was just a little too close to be in sharp focus.
Wow, love the colors and the birds themselves. What a fun thing to witness when one has their camera with them, like mother nature gave you a gift. Wonderful image!
Wow! I love goldfinches, and you caught an upper wing and an underwing in focus. But the two heads at daggers drawn combined with all those claws make it a fine action shot. I don’t see how you could have got it all in focus, nor does it need this. To me it speaks: aggression. (Agree with @Robena.Sirett about the processing of the oof wings-I feel both birds have been tidied up too much, and maybe didn’t need this).
Initial Reaction: Great Action, Charles. I’ve been trying for years to get this with our American Goldfinches, without success.
Follow on notes: The selections and adjustments on the more out of focus parts of the birds are rather obvious. You might try feathering the boundaries a lot more. Alternatively, ti looks as if you had brought the brightness of the birds up-if that’s the case, I think you could afford to bring the background up as well (maybe not quite as much) and that would mellow out the transitions between the birds and background a bit more.
Hi Charles, a fine catch showing this interaction with great poses. Almost touching beak to beak - quite cool. Nice exposure and background too. I agree with the out of focus wing looking odd around the edges apparently from selection/post processing.
The light is amazing and catching them beak to beak really captures their behavior. Very nice Charles.
Was this taken hand held or was a tripod used. Just asking for my own benefit as I have an 800mm lens and it gets pretty tricky when hand held yet harder to catch action using tripods limitations. Thank you for sharing this amazing action shot.
I’m late here, trying to catch up again. I’m afraid my initial reaction was that it was a composite, and a clumsy one at that, due to the very obvious selection outline. I’m glad I read further that it was an actual capture, as it was wonderful to get that, but the too-sharp selection cheapens it. It is worthy of more care. The BG is lovely and the interaction superb.
You can edit a selection if you did it properly, with a mask. It’s so easy – just use a brush of the appropriate size, and in some cases even with lower opacity. The initial selection can even be painted on in quick mask mode, but that would be too tedious here. Just use something like select subject and then edit the mask. (It will never give a perfect mask, and the right feathering is mandatory.)
