Show your Bird Portraits

[Isaac Grant]

We had a major influx of Franklin's Gulls and Cave Swallows into New York City. One evening while looking to photograph Cave Swallows I happened upon a flock of Black Skimmers. Here is my favorite shot that I have ever gotten of a skimmer. This young bird was playing with this leaf. I took this a few moments before the sun set and had to desaturate the pic a bit. Canon 7d2 and Sigma 150-600 C. Have some nice shots of adults as well that will post soon.

Black Skimmer by Isaac Grant, on Flickr

 

[Click]

Lovely light. Beautiful shot, Isaac. 8)

 

[Isaac Grant]

Lovely light. Beautiful shot, Isaac. 8)

As always, thank you for the kind comments.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Isaac, very cute, great shot.

Alan that is very special. How did you come to find yourself in that particular circumstance?

And now ....... another shot of my little boy. You might say I've been captivated by these guys of late! :-[

Jack

 

[AlanF]

As dancing birds have become popular, here is a pair of herons in high level ballet taken on my 7D with the 300/2.8 at 420mm.

I really like this shot. Well done, Alan.

Thanks click. It was a memorable performance by the pair.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Isaac has kindly offered some feedback on my last shot which clearly was/is over-exposed. The shot was severely over-exposed to begin with and to top it off the lighting was harsh. I did try to improve it in DPP without much success.

At any rate, I've taken much more severe action in DPP now and am wondering if this is moving in the right direction. I suspect that there isn't a lot more I can do other than pray for another opportunity where I'll be better prepared. I'm struggling with how to use fill flash with the 1D4 and it seems to be a bigger challenge than with my 6D (600EX-RT). Flash didn't fire on this shot and I was on manual with the camera. Any advice/criticism is gladly accepted.

Jack

 

[Isaac Grant]

Isaac has kindly offered some feedback on my last shot which clearly was/is over-exposed. The shot was severely over-exposed to begin with and to top it off the lighting was harsh. I did try to improve it in DPP without much success.

At any rate, I've taken much more severe action in DPP now and am wondering if this is moving in the right direction. I suspect that there isn't a lot more I can do other than pray for another opportunity where I'll be better prepared. I'm struggling with how to use fill flash with the 1D4 and it seems to be a bigger challenge than with my 6D (600EX-RT). Flash didn't fire on this shot and I was on manual with the camera. Any advice/criticism is gladly accepted.

Jack

Not sure if I should respond here or there now. In either case the harsh reality is that sometimes we take a beautiful shot of an amazing bird performing perfectly but just don't get it perfectly. With a short amount of time to take the shot or being caught without preparation sometimes leads to less than perfect results. I have done it way more times than I care to remember. Do you want to know how many Coot shots I have with blown out white beaks But that is OK. Your shot is still very nice but has an over exposed section. I'd love to see a Pileated that close, let alone get a nice shot of it and would gladly take a slightly over exposed shot to none at all. But this particular bird (a black and white bird with striking red plumage) is an absolute nightmare to expose properly. When the whites are exposed properly then you have blacks that have no details at all. The opposite is true as well. Properly exposed blacks will always lead to very over exposed white areas. The stars and moon and planets need to align to get it spot on.

I process 99.99% of my shots in DPP. I have only used Lightroom on a few of my shots. Couple times to clone out bird poop on a rock and other times to apply noise reduction to the background. Others use it successfully for much more. It is interesting that you voice your concern with DPP. This is a perfect scenario where DPP is simply not good enough to process the shot fully. Going into Lightroom or PS and applying selective highlight controls and lowering whites is the only way to do that and get selective results. (In some cases it may not even work) The red cast to the shot is easily controlled with color temperature/white balance settings or going into the RGP and lowering the number on your R, G and B until you get proper exposure.

I think your first pic is better because it shows better color in your darks. Both have over exposed whites but the second pic you lose the rest of the great details from the scenery and the rest of the bird. But at the end of the day, so what! Awesome bird, awesome experience. The pic shares that with the rest of us.

 

[Jack Douglas]

Thanks Isaac. I concur. It's easy to get overly excited about a bird shot and overlook the obvious fact that technically it's just not very good. I lose tons of shots so it's not a big deal although one always wishes for a repeat with more ideal conditions. I don't mean to get carried away but here is a later shot where I had finally come to my senses and adjusted the camera exposure (no brightness change in DPP). Only, there is no berry in his mouth. Any thoughts?

Jack

 

[Roo]

Masked Owl, Wedge Tailed Eagle and Whistling Kite

 

[Click]

Masked Owl, Wedge Tailed Eagle and Whistling Kite

Beautiful series, I especially like the first picture. Well done Roo.

 

[Isaac Grant]

Yesterday I posted a young skimmer from the flock. Here is the lone adult. I took this picture a few minutes before sunset. In post (DPP) I actually lowered the saturation and the color values. No color added to this picture at all. Just perfect evening light. Canon 7d2 and Sigma 150-600 C.

Black Skimmer. 600mm, F8, ISO 400, SS 1/1000. Hand held
Black Skimmer by Isaac Grant, on Flickr

 

[Click]

I really like this picture. Well done, Isaac.

 

[Isaac Grant]

Thanks Isaac. I concur. It's easy to get overly excited about a bird shot and overlook the obvious fact that technically it's just not very good. I lose tons of shots so it's not a big deal although one always wishes for a repeat with more ideal conditions. I don't mean to get carried away but here is a later shot where I had finally come to my senses and adjusted the camera exposure (no brightness change in DPP). Only, there is no berry in his mouth. Any thoughts?

Jack

I think this picture is exposed much better. I would actually bring the shadows and even the exposure up a bit to lighten the picture. See how much you could get without blowing out the whites. And so it goes with photography. When you get the exposure right, the action is not as good. Still it is an excellent shot of a Pileated. Among the coolest I have seen. And I am not being fake about it. Such a great close up and it eating berries is extremely unique. I've been a birder for 37 years and have seen quite a bit, but never this. Consider yourself very lucky.

 

[Roo]

Masked Owl, Wedge Tailed Eagle and Whistling Kite

Beautiful series, I especially like the first picture. Well done Roo.

Thanks Click!

 

[Cog]

 

[Cog]

 

[Click]

Beautiful pictures, Cog. Nicely done.

 

[Mickat]

Rainbow Bee Eater

 

[Click]

Rainbow Bee Eater

Great shot. Nicely done, Mickat.

 

[Valvebounce]

Hi Cog.
Really nice series, what are they please, is the last one a road runner?

To all, I have been very remiss about commenting on shots, there are always such good shots here and between now and my last posting nothing has changed there, still lots of excellent shots.

Cheers, Graham.