** Weekly C & C Thread #48 ** Non-K7-Photos Allowed!

Thanks for the C&C, I agree about the horizontal grass stem. I am definitely still at the stage of just being relieved to get a shot of the main subject, though in this case I really wanted the light also. It will be many a year before I've got the confidence that I'll get the subject whenever I press the shutter and can wait for the composition to come together.
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rgmwa said:

These birds have fantastic colours and markings, and an expression that hovers between comedy and pathos. Well, that's how they look to me anyway.

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well put, I'm no birder, but I find puffins are just so cute, they're irresistable

rgmwa said:

In correctly exposing for the bird (using flash?), the grass has been badly over-exposed, which was probably inevitable. However, if you crop it, you would lose the context of the burrow, so you've probably achieved a good compromise - and the bird looks great.
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Robert

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Thanks for your comments Robert, my dilemma exactly, it was mid afternoon, high sun, bird deep in shadow, too large dynamic range to get anything sensible, so I decided to expose for the bird, this was 1/180th, f5.6, ISO800, not use the flash in case I scared him off down the burrow and live with the result.

I did consider cropping all blown grass out but felt it helped frame the bird
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thanks for taking the time to comment

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that is definitely a well worn wing !

I'd be tempted to crop a bit (more?), remove the rhs by 1/3rd, and probably the top by similar ? The grass stems give it some background structure, almost supporting the butterfly, the rest of the background don't add much for me.

I find it awkward to catch butterflies, usually the fly off before I'm close enough, out of interest what focal length did you use for this ?

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now that's what I would term a well observed image, all those shapes, lines criss crossing etc, the sort of thing I wouldn't shoot, especially when the mrs is with me !

the longer I look at it the more I feel that the circles should be made more prominent by trying to remove as much of the roof as poss, I find my eyes being pulled towards the roof and the guttering too much I think. I've played with it a bit myself but it's tricky to retain the bounding of the wall with a 3:2 ratio. if you're skilled at photoshop perhaps making the gutter black would help ??

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thanks for your thoughts Col, there's plenty more blown grass where that came from ;-) I'll have a look at the original, see what I think if I crop less tightly.

I was hoping the mirrored L shape formed by the blown highlights would frame the bird pleasingly.

It's interesting that from three CnCs all three are different wrt the cropping of the highlights.

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Thanks for your interest, crop as suggested (oh and I slightly reduced the blue)



Not a true macro lens but I'm truly addicted to the DA*300mm.
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bladerunneruk said:

thanks for your thoughts Col, there's plenty more blown grass where that came from ;-) I'll have a look at the original, see what I think if I crop less tightly.

I was hoping the mirrored L shape formed by the blown highlights would frame the bird pleasingly.

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I didn't find the shape quite right, my thought was to increase the blow outs in the current crop:

bladerunneruk said:

It's interesting that from three CnCs all three are different wrt the cropping of the highlights.

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If there wasn't anyone else around I'd probably risked one shot with flash the few birds I've tried it with just show slight surprise.

bladerunneruk said:

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Thanks again to everyone who participated this week; there were some real stunners in there, which doesn't make the C&C easy!

Comments can continue forever, and next week there'll be a new post, although it might be on Thursday instead of Wednesday, as I'll be travelling at the beginning of the week, and I'm not sure if I'll have internet access.
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Keitha McCall

Pentaxian and Snapshot Shooter since April 2007
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