A robin and some water

dutch27 · May 18, 2013

Took these last weekend. These are the better shots I got from a morning walk around a local historic estate. I know they could be better, so looking for tips on how. It was overcast, which I think lead to some dull colors on the robin, I tried to bring the colors out in PS, but didn't want it to look artificial by playing with it too much. I'm just starting to toy around with photography as a new hobby so have tons to learn and appreciate constructive comments.

My tripod is broken, so these were handheld, I know a new tripod would likely help tremendously with shooting.

*Edit, I didn't realize how much photobucket downsizes the resolution. Does Flicky maintain higher resolution on uploads?

dxqcanada · May 18, 2013

The Robin has the wrong light falling on it, so it will make it difficult to balance the light and dark side. You have to watch how the sun/direct light falls on your subject. You can darken the light side but you lose the details in the shadow area ... so it is hard to win without a lot of post processing, but then it might look odd.

Waterfalls/flowing water images are not the easiest to take pictures of ... usually because they are not too good compositionally.
Here is a good read: Photographing Waterfalls

dutch27 · May 18, 2013

Thanks for the input and article. My initial thoughts on it were the shadow on the bird messed it all up, and the red on its breast turned out very dull, but I liked all the empty space in the shot. Any thoughts on general composition?

The waterfall one was mostly for me an exercise using slower shutter speeds during the day, as well as trying to see if I could apply the rule of thirds to try and make it seem more interesting.

dutch27 · May 18, 2013

I was going back through the photos from that day to see if there any I wanted tips on to go and re-shoot, and found one of the robin that is sharper, has better light, and has better color. Apparently I messed with this RAW and just never saved it as a final picture in my folder of finished shots from that day.

WesternGuy · May 18, 2013

First impressions: Robin shot #1) as dxqcanada noted, the light is not right. Also, it would have been a better composition, IMHO, if the robin had been on the right side of the image (rule of thirds). This would have given it some room to move into on the left side. Waterfall shot) this is too tightly cropped, in my opinion, and the "stick" on the right side is very distracting, in fact it is the second place my eye went after a quick view of the falls. You might have been better to take this one with a portrait orientation and include more of the falls and some of the "country/sky" above and below the falls. Robin shot #2) This is a very good shot - the bird is properly placed on the right third looking into the left part of the image and you have captured a catch light in its eye. HTH.

WesternGuy