Birds and lighthouse

[billtils]

Like most (?all?) of us I've had to settle for re-working old images more than finding something new.

Here are 2 of the former and one of the latter.


Fulmar (reworked to crop out distracting background)





Lighthouse (reworked as mono and new crop to make it more about the path than the lighthouse itself)





"Beat you to it!". This is new from an afternoon at RSPB Loch Leven. The faclities are closed but the trails are open and it looks like someone is keeping the feeders topped up.

[Manfred M]

Of the three images here, only the second really connects with me reasonably well. The two shots of the birds really don't strike me in any particular way.

The first shot is a touch busy. While the bird is quite sharp, the blurry foreground somehow looks wrong. The birds wing and foreground appear to be in the same plane so the eye would expect to have it more in focus.

With the third image, the larger, out of focus bird is where my eyes want to go, so bird in front just does not seem to matter.

The lighthouse is more interesting, but seems a bit too close to the top of the frame, I can understand trying to play up the path, but the foreground on the bottom right with the grass takes up too much visual space, in my view. I suspect cropping the bottom third and presenting this more as a panoramic format would give you a more effective image.

[billtils]

Thanks for the comments Manfred.

In the first, the wing and foreground are not in the same plane. I can understand why you think that, but I opted for the crop you see here to concentrate on the bird (the text should probably have said "reworked to crop out distracting foreground").

The framing in the second is somewhat of a personal choice - I like the texture of the grass which contrasts with the sky and the plain building. Possibly cropping off the botto quarter of the grassy area would be worth a try though.

The third one is just a fun shot with the cheeky little fellow getting the seed and the larger bird in the background about to leave empty beaked.

[Wavelength]

I liked the third one most.

Birds in flight looks more majestic when the wing is seen above the bodyline, save some special cases; still i liked it for its sharpness.

In the scenery i would trim out some foreground to make it a wider image.

[billtils]

Thanks Nanda - I agree with both comments, one I can fix but the other (the bird) is what it is. You may not have seen my posts on why I bought a D500 body, but the answer (for it's very fast burst speed and super focus lock) is exactly what I did not have in the body used to take this shot. I was very happy with it though.

[Ken Clacher]

Hi Bill, is that Elie lighthouse in the second picture?
Ken

[billtils]

Hi Bill, is that Elie lighthouse in the second picture?
Ken

Indeed it is Ken - taken from the path after spending ages on the beach trying and failing to be ceative with the Lady's Tower.

[billtils]

I had another look at the Lighthouse image and cropped off some of the bottom as Manfred suggested; also tweaked the contrast and blacks a little. For simplicity the edits were made in flickr and there was nothing I could do about the "head room" for the lighthouse there, but I do intend to carry over the editing to the original in my library.

[Wavelength]

I definitely find some improvement because of better focus on the main subject

[Marwus]

I like both bird images(because i like birds a lot) but in case of first photo o would try to suppress green in right bottom or remove it completely, maybe even go for B&W image and third one i would mirror. Your modification of lighthouse picture is very nice.

[billtils]

Thanks David

[rpcrowe]

I sill learn something everyday. I have, in my old age, become a custodian of irrelevant and sometimes irreverent information.

As a young lad, I had a model of the Fairey Fulmar, a World War Two, British Carrier Aircraft. I never new that it was named for a bird