Landed

[Digital]

At Lake Carroll, Canadian geese are all over the place. This is a small sample of them.
C&C welcomed.
Bruce

[escape]

I like this shot. The two sets of geese are almost like mirror images.

[Wavelength]

I liked the image as well as Daniel's observation about it

[DanK]

Personally, I think Canada geese are interesting even though they are very common, but I'm afraid this image doesn't work for me, for a few reasons.

The first is the backround/foreground. Most of the image is either the water, which isn't relevant, or the cracked pavement, which is ugly. You could partially fix this just by cropping.

The second is the light. You shot this in very bright sunlight, and the image is metered so as not to blow out the bright areas, like the pavement. The result is that much of the interesting detail in the birds is in shadow or underexposed, so it isn't really all that apparent. You might be able to lessen this problem in post, but given the small areas--the necks and heads--it would be a bit of a challenge. I think one might be able to do it with luminosity masks, but that's something that isn't in everyone's bag of tricks.

The third is about composition. For the most part, I don't read Scott Kelby's work, but I did read some years ago when I was starting out in my transition to digital, and one of the things he wrote about flower photography was I think the single most useful piece of advice I came across when I was starting that sort of work. It applies to photographing many common things, not just flowers--e.g., pets. He wrote that one of the key steps is finding a perspective or point of view that is different from that of someone just walking by. There are various ways of doing this--getting low, getting very close, finding the subjects in an unusual or attractive context, etc. But just taking a shot from standing when the photographer walks by usually won't do it.

sorry to be critical, but I hope these comments are useful.

Dan

[Manfred M]

Dan - you sum up my analysis of the image quite well, especially the point you make about the shooting position / PoV.

Most images we see posted are taken from the same PoV, an adult's normal standing position. Change that and you can get a lot more interesting images. I know one photographer who carries a small tarpaulin in his car so he can lie on the ground without getting too dirty. I know another (former) wedding photographer who bought a pickup truck so that he could carry a long step ladder to his shoots.

Then there was Ansel Adams who had a shooting platform mounted to the top of his vehicile.

[Geoff F]

I tend to agree that this scene doesn't really fit well into the chosen size ratio. Maybe, if you want to include all 4 birds, a widescreen crop would be the answer.

Yes, the light is rather harsh but you can't pick and choose light levels with wildlife shots and in this particular case I rather like seeing those shadows

[Round Tuit]

Dan - you sum up my analysis of the image quite well, especially the point you make about the shooting position / PoV.

Most images we see posted are taken from the same PoV, an adult's normal standing position. Change that and you can get a lot more interesting images. I know one photographer who carries a small tarpaulin in his car so he can lie on the ground without getting too dirty. I know another (former) wedding photographer who bought a pickup truck so that he could carry a long step ladder to his shoots.

Then there was Ansel Adams who had a shooting platform mounted to the top of his vehicile.

Interesting to note that he was shooting pretty well at 12:00 PM on a sunny day

[DanK]

Interesting to note that he was shooting pretty well at 12:00 PM on a sunny day

Good point. Could be that he was only setting up, or it could be that harsh lighting was what he wanted. That seems possible for some of what he did.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Digital]

To Dan's comments: I agree with you about the background; however in the context of the title, I wanted to include the water.
The lighting is bad; however I liked the position of the geese when I saw them come out of the water no matter that the light was harsh.
As far as the perspective I agree with you that a better position to shoot the geese would have led to a better composition; however I have very bad knees which make stooping for a better position impossible. This was shot from a window mounted tripod inside my vehicle. To your point, it is better to be level with your subject rather than shooting down (e.g. an adult shooting a child from the adult's perspective) on them.
Bruce

[Digital]

Better crop?

[DanK]

Yes, IMHO. I'd probably go tighter.

[Digital]

Tighter