Various Birds etc...

[PixelRabbit]

Heya Just wanted to share a few shots from the past couple days.
C&C always welcome!

This is a small piece of the flock that hangs around our place, I was lucky enough to be directly below their flight path I was very surprised to see some Red House Finches in there, haven't seen hide nor hair of them at the feeders.

Flying Upstream



A dried weed I found, I've seen these many times but finally got some neat light into it.



Blue Jay showing off. This one needed a lot of TLC after the fact and the processing feels a bit forced to me... but he's trying so hard I had to include it



This one really shows how teeny these Finches are!



And finally a Cardinal .... because he is just so darn pretty

 

[dxqcanada]

I like the concept of #1 ... though I feel that cropping is needed. Not exactly sure what.

To emphasis the crazy Jay I'd say crop close.
#3 is your strongest in composition. Even though the bird is in the centre, the curved bars add framing.
Like the Jay, I suggest close crop.

 

[PixelRabbit]

Hey Dx, thanks for taking a look.
Cropping .... ugh ... I swear!
Here is a crop I have of the birds, will try a different crop on the Blue Jay (really had no clue what to do with him!) and Finch (again.. was unsure how to treat it with the shepherd's pole)


IMG_7296cr1 by Judi Smelko, on Flickr

 

[EricD]

3rd shot....fantastic!

 

[BlackSheep]

PixelRabbit, your bird photos keep getting better and better! I really like the first shot (there's several different crops you could use if you wished on that), and the finch photo, very well done!

And that Blue Jay photo is awesome! I remembered that you had mentioned you were having computer issues recently, so I hope you don't mind but I took the liberty of a slight crop + removed the bits in the background:

Hope you like it!

 

[dxqcanada]

Cropping .... ugh ... I swear!

I feel that the balance of birds and empty space between them does not fit with the image format in the original shot ... if feels too unbalanced (for lack of a better word).

 

[PixelRabbit]

Hi Blacksheep, thank you! Yep still waiting on parts for the desktop so thank you so much for the edit, it looks so much better w/o that junk on the snow

Thanks Dx, I'm going to play a bit later today and see what other crops I come up with.
I'll get the hang of cropping properly yet! Very frustrating to know the right one (or more) is in there and I can't seem to hit it.

 

[Thunder_o_b]

Interesting shots here. Always like birds in flight shots.

 

[bazooka]

#1 is one of those moments that we cannot perceive with our eye which in itself is interesting. Add to that the different shapes caused by the different parts of the "wing flapping cycle" and the arrangment... very interesting and unique (at least to me) photo.

 

[PixelRabbit]

Thanks Thunder

Hey Bazooka I think I like the same things about it that you do. Ultimately I chose the first crop because it included the two birds that were flying lowest and were out of focus, they are a big part of why I like the shot.

 

[Frequency]

All these images are really impressive

 

[PixelRabbit]

Thanks Frequency