Meet Willy the wagtail.

[steve ward]

Hi Everyone,took a shot of a bird we call a Willy Wagtail, these little guys never sit still, hence the name.
I was wondering what you guys thought of the composition, i've cropped some of the lake from the top and the side but thought it looked better with the other post considering he was looking towards it.Any c&c welcome, thankyou.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Steve,

I agree with your reasoning for the crop/framing, although there is possibly 5% width unused on right that could be trimmed.

The texture of the posst and their light colour does draw the eye, I'd be tempted to blur them a little, or at least, not sharpen them along with the subject.

If you shot RAW, it might also be possible to recover some detail on the shady side.

However, these are all quite minor suggestions to (hopefully) improve an image that's already 80%+

Well done,

[steve ward]

Thankyou so much Dave, I liked it but there was just something i couldn't put my finger on, and yes your right, as soon as I read your reply I could see that the trim would look better and I was tending to like the texture on the post more than the rest of the image, so yes again my attention was being drawn away from the bird. Again Dave, thankyou.

I am now finding myself evaluating my shots more, so hopefully one day in the future i can help someone else with the same polite, respectful and constructive c&c that you guys offer on here. Cheers.

[ucci]

Great shot. Crisp, sharp capture and really well done in that you have not "lost" its nib which is clearly seen. Not easy to do when you have a black beak against black body feathers. We have these cheeky little blighters here as well. And it was my understanding that they are so named because of the way they really wag their tail feathers from side to side when they land and perch on something.

[steve ward]

Thanks for your comments Ken, yes these little guys are hard to pin down, I got three shots before he flew away, the other two are just too dark to make out his head detail, the light was on my left, he turned so I got it.
Still I had to do some PP with the crop and some lightening and a tad sharpening.
I will see if I can maybe make the posts a little less detailed as per Daves suggestion and take a bit more of the right side as well. Cheers Ken.


As for their name i'm sure you are right, they are courageous little birds for their size, i've seen them chase off a crow and heard of an encounter with a dog too, the dog wasn't fazed but willy never gave up.

[Bobobird]

Nice shot. Nothing to add to what has already been said.

[steve ward]

Hi Dave, I do find shooting in RAW much better, at the moment i'm using Nikons View NX2 and I have an old CS2 PS,( which I'm still coming to terms with) I'm planning on getting either CS5 or Lightroom 4 when I finally decide what I would use most.

The Nikon software although quite ok, seems limited to what others can do.(pretty good though considering it's free).

[steve ward]

Thanks Bobo, appreciated.