Another Day with the Pigeons

[Joel_W]

Had the day off from work, and had planned to go back to the local pond that the Pigeons were at last week. Well, naturally it was lightly raining this morning, but the forecast called for partly cloudy skies in the afternoon. If all the pieces came together, I'd have a few hours to do some shooting before I had to return home and back to "My Honey to do List". Here's 5 pictures from todays outing.

Thanks for stopping by.


DSC_0086 by jaw101, on Flickr



DSC_0119 by jaw101, on Flickr


DSC_0115 by jaw101, on Flickr


DSC_0093 by jaw101, on Flickr


DSC_0090 by jaw101, on Flickr

 

[Forkie]

These shots are technically pretty much perfect - the exposure is great, the colours are really nice and the detail in the feathers is amazing.

But, I think you need to put a little more thought into your composition. All the birds are centred and in all but the close up, half the birds are hidden behind a rock which takes up almost the whole bottom third of the image - it's a big out of focus brown blob that gets in the way.

Also, you've hidden your EXIF data so I can't see what aperture you used, but I suspect you have a few stops available to blur out that unattractive background.

 

[Joel_W]

Forkie, thanks for your input. I have no idea why the EXIF data doesn't show up on Flickr, as I haven't changed a thing to the account settings. I just checked, and I don't even see where one can change that. What is different is that I did the basic PP in Nikon View NX2, then did the final editing (which was very little) in Nikon Capture NX 2.3, as I just got the program a few days ago.

Yesterday was mostly about getting more in tune with the few Pigeons that actually showed up, as the pond is usually just frequented by Ducks, Geese, and Seagulls. These two, which I'm assuming were a pair getting ready for the mating season, spent the whole time in a little break/depression in the retaining wall. That's what you're seeing. For the most part, the background was just water and a little rock. In some pictures there were already out of focus, others they weren't. For the most part I was within a few feet of the birds as I just sat there for a while till they got use to me. DOF that close shooting between 150-200mm focal length was something I was very aware of, and concerned about. Many shots had one bird or the other one not completely in focus, and therefore got the DELETE button asap.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the detailed pictures I got, as I'm finding that the good old Pigeon is a really beautiful bird, that is easy to get rather close to.