Please critique this photos.

Thank you

Hi Karen,

Thank you for posting the photograph. Aren't baby birds the most beautiful things? So awkward and fragile looking. I am curious what it is that draws you to this bird? You were lucky for having the opportunity to see something like this in the wild. By some chance, did you get a chance to see momma?

I see a lot of different things about the photograph as a whole. As I said before, I like the conveyed sense of fragileness in the baby. The photo seems to have a heavy side light hitting the back of the bird. While I generally like strong side-lighting, I think in this case it threw off your camera's metering. The shot looks about 1/2 to 2/3 of a stop under exposed. As a result of the under-exposure, I wound up getting a lot of noise in the shadow areas when I tried to brighten it up in PS.

The other thing I will mention is that the shot may have been better composed had you just reached out and tugged at the baby bird's wing. I understand that they really respond to that. LOL. Not really. However, because the bird appears to be a bit on the timid side, you are getting what my father would call 'the North end of a South Bound Birdie.' I think that ideally, the bird would have been more frontal.

Thanks for sharing!

James

Thank you so much for your critique. I really appreciate it. I happened to be on a golf course when I saw this bird and its Momma. Sometimes I get my best bird shots on golf courses, but I have never really had anybody critique my photography, so I really really appreciate it!

Do you like this photo better? Ideally I would have had a great depth of field and would have kept the chicks in focus more, is that a correct assumption?

Hey Karen,

I like this photograph MUCH more. I like the 3D look to it. Having said that, there are some things you can do in PS to help improve this photograph. Specifically, you will notice that Momma is much darker than the two chicks.

I would create a new layer (a duplicate), and brighten the second layer until you have Momma where you want her. Than, I would use the paint brush (painted black...set to whatever opacity that you want to get the job done) to darken the other sections of the photograph.

Cheers
James

PS I wrote a tutorial on this last year when we first opened up the site. It is NOT one of my better pieces of work, LOL. However, it definitely gets the job done.

http://www.nwpphotoforum.com/ubbthreads/JM_Pieces/Highlights/Highlights.htm?Cat=0\

Oh, that is such a great trick! Thanks! Does this one look better to you?

Hey Karen,

Thanks for the compliment. It is one of the better things that I learned over the last few years. There is no question that the Momma looks much better. I think you may have darkened the two babies more than the original?

Please do not take this the wrong way. I would personally nix the border.

James

Thank you soooo much! No problem, I am not taking any of this the wrong way, I really appreciate you taking your time to help me. I believe you're right on the border, it is distracting. You're right about the babies. I ended up taking the opacity to 77% and they look much better now.

Hey Karen, welcome aboard. I like the first shot and I am not a baby bird person. Some people love um, and well, this one is cuter then most:) I have to agree with James on his comments and noticed one more thing. For your first photo, the focus seems to be on it’s butt. With the low contrast shadow the head is in, it hard to tell. But it looks like the focus was not on the birds head. To bad she didn’t turn around for you and face into the light:)

I like the second one much better, and again agree with James. Exposure is a little weak. But the composition is great and overall the shot works very well. A little more DOF would be good, but with such a small photo, it is hard to tell online here if the chicks are out of focus.

Keep shooting,