Black Bird

[JRSpN]

So haven't shot much with this lens Sigma 150-500 and haven't taken many pictures of birds, but this one landed on a railing and i had my camera with me so figured why not.

But let me know what you think, i didn't crop the image at all just resized it down a bit figured full size would be to large for the sight.

 

[JRSpN]

here is the unedited version

 

[goodguy]

That's not a blackbird.

This is a blackbird

 

[JRSpN]

that black bird is way cooler than mine.

and BTW my settings were ISO 800 F8 1/4000

 

[LexxFalcon]

I like it! Please bear in mind I'm a complete noob here, so anything I say can easily be ignored, and I'm coming at it from a perspective of "this worked for me", rather than "this is what I think should be technically different".

I like background blur, I really do, but it's a wee bit too blurred for me on this one. On the bright side, it really makes the bird pop. On the downside, it looks kind of abstract. Not that that's necessarily a bad look, but there's just something that seems off about it, at least to me, personally. The contrast with the white railing seems off because of it too - having said that, mind, black bird on white railing contrast = awesome, I do like that.

I really love how sharp the bird himself is, though. You can either talk to birds or got really lucky with his expression - or sheer talent to grab the shot right at that moment - because the look on his little avian face is fantastic. I like the play of light on his feathers, too. It looks almost like you could reach out and touch him, or rather, if you tried, he'd give you the evils and fly away!

Overall, I think it's a great image, I'm just not personally convinced on how blurred the background is, but I realise that's a very personal-choice, your-mileage-may-vary thing. And again, total noob, so going on aesthetic instinct rather than technical knowledge. It's far better than I could have done except by a very lucky accident! Nice work.

 

[amolitor]

This is definitely moody and kind of creepy. I dislike the plain pattern of the background in the original, but I think it works with the vignette, somehow. The bird looks really malevolent.

 

[DarkShadow]

That's not a blackbird.

This is a blackbird

Show off.

 

[DarkShadow]

I like the little the Black Bird but I rather watch the big Blackbird in flight.

 

[goodguy]

I like the little the Black Bird but I rather watch the big Blackbird in flight.

Looks like I hijacked this thread (ironic term when talking about planes LOL) but I couldn't help it.
SR-71 is probably the coolest plane EVER!!!

 

[xstarx]

Its really great! I definitely love the edited version more, the original doesnt have the same impact with the lower contrast etc. It would be cool to see a little less blur in the background, although thats not a fault just a preference =)

 

[JRSpN]

Thanks for the feedback, I think the reason the back ground is that blurred is because I was about 30 Feet away from the bird using a 500mm Zoom and the background images were about 300 feet away. So i dont think there was much i could do about that.

If anyone has any thoughts on how to get less blur i would love to hear it so i can compensate for it. Only thing i can thing of is position myself so that the background would have been a tree or something closer so the distortion would have been less.