This was at my favorite crow hangout 2 years ago, when I lived in Connecticut. I could sit down on the ground and they would sometimes just go about there life as usual and sometimes come and see what I was up to. Crows are very intelligent, beautiful and fun to watch.
Anything
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 100
300mm
f/6.3
1/1000
Cropped slightly and adjusted exposure, highlights,shadows
I love corvids too. Wicked smaht as we used to say.
Itās a shade off tack sharp, but acceptable in the small view. The blacks are well done here - the shimmery colors show up a little, possibly some burning in could lift some on the shade side of the bird. I also wish there was a little more grass underneath her. And maybe lighten the eye a bit. The action pose is really the zinger though. Those feet!
@Kris_Smith Thanks, thatās all the grass there was in front in the image, Iām sitting in the parking lot watching and donāt usually change my settings when something good is going on! and definitely not the lens length even when an animal walks towards me! The closer the better in my opinion! Unfortunately, I donāt have the pp equipment to do any local adjustments, but maybe someday! Thanks for looking and your feedback!
Photography is supposed to be fun and in an effort to keep it that way for you and so that you stick around and not give up in the face of sometimes impossible suggestions, Iām going to propose a possibly radical idea.
Use a creative filter mode in your camera, or a scene type or whatever Nikon calls it and shoot jpeg.
I suggest this for two reasons - first, your biggest piece of control over your photos is you and your camera. If you let your camera do some of the decision-making, it leaves you more time to practice the things it canāt do such as zooming, framing, & composing. You donāt have to go full program - keep choosing aperture & shutter speed because again; thatās your biggest area of control. The second reason is that the camera itself might be capable of doing a better editing job than your current set-up. Iām not familiar with Nikons so I could be wrong, but fiddle with it.
It all comes down to seat time. Thatās what my many past driving instructors called it. The more seat time, the smoother you get; the more automatic your movements and decisions. If you want to be fast you have to be smooth, in order to be smooth you have to have seat time. So the next time a crow walks toward you, you will have the presence of mind to change your camera settings to something more optimal and have more keepers.
Recently I came up with The Digital Film Challenge as a way to slow down my own photography and concentrate on fundamentals in the field. Itās a hoot and while you donāt have to constrict yourself as much as I did, you can still let go of the processing in the same way. So far Iāve done a single āroll of filmā - all straight out of the camera jpegs that you can see here - with commentary of what went right and what went wrong.
I donāt want you to be discouraged or give up because you donāt have the post-processing set ups the rest of us might have. I donāt want you to stop shooting. I want you to have more fun, more keepers and more interaction with the nature you love. I have to dash, but if you want to PM me about this, feel free. If you want to open a discussion on the forum thatās great and Iām happy to chatter on. If you want to ignore me, thatās cool too. Cheers!
Hi Vanessa. Kristen had some interesting suggestions. The only things I see a problem with in this image are the slight softness and the bird being rather centered. When itās walking toward you the focus can shift quickly, but autofocus should hold. shifting the active focal point is something I still struggle with, but I have learned to zoom out. I think every bird photographer starts out with āthe closer the betterā philosophy. After awhile youāll probably start looking at other compositions. I really like the blacks in this image, the low angle you had and the pose of the crow.
And spring is almost here. weāve had Tree Swallows the last couple of days and they were arguing with the Bluebirds over nest boxes today.
@Kris_Smith
Hi Kristen, thanks for the suggestion! Itās so funny but after quite a few discussions lately with different people Iāve actually been thinking that maybe I should go jpg because I canāt do anything anybody says to do anyway! And if I understand correctly raw is more like something you have to develop in pp, right? I read your blog, interesting because my first experience with photography was as a kid using my parents 35mm film manual focus I think it was Pentax, not that it matters, but I loved it and was pretty good at it, at least people liked my pictures! Unfortunately I canāt go manual focus as my vision isnāt so great, which is why Iām so glad for auto focus! Even though I can spot animals miles away, donāt know how! But maybe I should at least let the camera do the ISO as I seem to get that wrong a lot! Thanks again, Iām a little scared not to do Raw, Iāve learned that raw is like having a negative and jpg is only having the finished product. Like back when I would pick up my photos 2 weeks later from turning in the film, but also got the negative stripsā¦ I guess It wonāt hurt to just do it! 
but do you have any thoughts on that?
@Dennis_Plank Thanks, Dennis! I hope to see photos of your swallows! Iāve only captured one of those a few times where you could kind of tell what it was!
@Dennis_Plank Hi, Dennis, on the note about being centered. It seems like nobody likes to have anything centered even if thatās the way it was photographed. Why is that?
Itās a basic principle of composition, though it can be violated at times. In general it seems to work better for animal photography if thereās more room in the direction of the critterās attention. Thereās also something about the human psyche that automatically focuses our attention on what are called the āone-thirdā points. You divide the frame vertically and horizontally into thirds and where the dividing lines cross are the one-third points. So if your bird is small in the frame, like your recent hummingbird, putting it at one of those crossing points somehow makes a more pleasing image for most people in most cases. If you have an animal large in the frame, if you can get their eye near one of those points without undue strain to the rest of the composition it also helps.
@Dennis_Plank yes, I always make sure that the eyes are either on or above the third line or on a crossing line, isnāt the Crow right on and above it? Iām kind of confused on this as well, because I had someone say they wanted to see another photo of mine with the animalās head more in the top 3rd and I had thought the whole head was there! Doing the 3rds principle the picture is basically divided into 9 squares, right?
Correct about the nine squares Vanessa, but itās not the squares so much as the intersections of the dividing lines. When I get on my computer this morning, Iāll send you a diagram.
Yes and no. A raw file is an uncompressed file and contains more information as a result. A jpg, whether created in camera or in computer, is a compressed file and has less information. That doesnāt mean it canāt be processed like a raw file, it can, just in a more restrained way. For example a shot with slightly blown out highlights - a raw file might have enough detail to be recovered and a jpeg might not. Same with shadows.
But what Iām really getting at is the processing - your camera might do a better job. At least right now. So when youāre shooting you donāt have to think too much about editing, just the capture. Play with the different styles the camera can deliver and see what works for you. My old Olympus had a snow scene setting that was positively delicious. Iād gladly have it back in my Lumix.
Hi Vanessa: Hereās that ārule of thirdsā people talk about:
This is a screen shot of the crop screen in Photoshop. It allows you to select different grid patterns or none at all to overlay the image. In this case I selected the Rule of Thirds option to illustrate it. When someone is talking about the upper 1/3 theyāre usually not talking about that square, but one of the upper intersections as circled on the grid. Note that in this instance, I would have really preferred getting the hummingbird a tad lower in the frame, but I would have had to get the thorn too close to the edge, so there was a compromise (as there usually is). Two other things to note in this: The bird is facing up and to the left, so the most room for it to move into comes from the lower right. Sometimes this isnāt possible if thereās a perch you want to include or something like that, but that gives you the general idea. Second, I was shooting up at this bird (it likes to perch in the top of the native hawthorn, which thankfully isnāt that tall a tree but still probably 10-12 feet. To help avoid the feeling of looking up Iām lucky enough to have a long lens (in this case with the teleconverter added it was 840 mm) but I also wanted to put the bird low in the frame because doing so gives the illusion that itās more on a level with the photographer. Conversely, if youāre shooting down at a bird putting it higher in the frame helps fool the viewer. (OK that was three or four things).
I like the raised foot on this one Vanessa. As mentioned a bit tight on bottom, but hey what a bunch of neat ideas.
@Dennis_Plank Thanks, Dennis, I know I learned that when I was starting out just 2 years ago , but I think I havenāt been applying it correctly. I think I have to probably in my mind exaggerate the placement and then hopefully it will be rightā¦let me know how I do in future!
