A Moment of Confusion
by Ashley Vincent
Canon EOS 7D, EF 500mm f/4L IS USM, Aperture Priority, f/8 (1/640 sec), ISO 1000, -1/3 EV, Tripod, JPG from RAW, Cropped About 35% in Total, Mostly from Upper and RH Edges, Non-Captive Subjects
Although I had another non-captive bird species in line set to show you next from my local zoo, having just developed most of the shots I took there during a 4-hour shoot dedicated entirely to Indian Rollers last Wednesday, I can't resist showing you this one first ;^)
For those of you who may not have read my previous thread, my main goal with the Indian Rollers has been (and still is!) to capture images of them in flight with full wingspread, as the colours they display are, to me, are among the most stunningly beautiful that Nature has to offer.
Well, I did get a number of in-flight shots that bring me a few degrees closer to my goal but, in much the same way as perhaps zirconia is an acceptable substitute for diamonds for some people until they can afford the real thing, I caught a few like this one here that will certainly do for the time being to keep me smiling ear to ear :^)
I'll try and make this quick, as I know for some I probably go on way too long in my write-ups ;^. but I would like to also set the scene a bit for you:
Upon arriving at the zoo, I headed straight for the area I knew a pair of Indian Rollers usually like to hang out and hunt for insects on the wing. In the past these two have been a fair way off, but with my 500mm + 1.4 TC I have been able to get reasonable shots and, with my 7D's 18 MP, I don't mind cropping some in PP.
But I was in for a real happy surprise: There was another pair of Rollers flying around that appeared to relegated to another area by the first pair and, to my great good fortune, this happened to be much closer to where I was situated and much lower to my level :^)
Anyhow, really not sure if the smaller one is a partner or, perhaps, an adolescent, but the adult – the one you see here with wings wide spread – repeatedly took off and returned to feed the other one with flying insects. On occasion though, the young one (we'll work on the assumption it was at least younger!) grew impatient waiting and ventured off on it's own sorties to see if it could catch something for itself, which it actually did while I was there several times.
So there I was, snapping away while mentally congratulating it's current successful mission, when all of a sudden this vision of glorious blues exploded into my viewfinder – fortunately I had sufficient presence of mind to keep the shutter release depressed!
The adult had returned with yet another tasty (no doubt to them!) snack for the nipper and, my guess is, upon seeing the kid with one of it's own, there was a moment of whatever it is birds experience that we humans would consider to be confusion – LOL ;^p
OK, I'd better wrap this one up … lest 48 hours pass and it's time for me to figure out what to post up next ;^)
Thanks for your time and attention anyone who's been patient enough to read all the above …... so much for keeping this “quick” ay? ;^p
Critique and comments are always welcome :^)
Comments
13 commentsI was actually going to mention the bright light areas myself, but I figured I'd already gone on too much in the original post about the setting etc. and mentioning something else as well might be pushing people's patience to the limit - LOL ;^p
However, now that you've brought it up, I completely agree that the most distracting factor of this image is indeed the bright areas to the right of the frame. In other pictures I have that show smallish areas of distracting light, I have successfully patched or cloned over them, and because I like this image so much, despite the areas being much larger than I usually would consider working on, I spent quite a bit of time trying to eliminate them in this way.
After a while though, particularly when it came to very careful cloning at very high magnification along the lines that separate the bright areas from the tail feathers and branches, a voice in my head suggested I might be taking this a little too far, so I thought I'd post it as you see it here without serious cloning and patching in the hope of receiving opinions of others on whether or not it should be left like this or if it would be deemed acceptable to work over those areas thoroughly ... which in all honesty is what I'm dying to do ;^)
Thoughts and opinions on this particular point then very much appreciated :^)
Jim: Aside from the bright areas on the RHS, the main disturbing factor to me are also those all-too prominent parallel branches, but unless get stuck into some serious cloning there's really nothing I can do about them ... aside from visualise and pray real, real hard for Nature to give me the same opportunity again with a wingspread like this completely out in the open, which believe me is something I'm already working on ;^p
Cheryl: I did indeed work some Surface Blur on the background, which might have resulted in what you see as "funky greens" TLC (that's Top Left Corner, as opposed to Tender Love 'n' Care!), but it wasn't due to cloning of any kind, so no need for my forgiveness, though happily extend you as much as you like if it'll make you happy ;^)
cheers
Rob
The bright spots are pretty distracting, though - should not be too tough to dampoen them.
Sandy
I might get around to doing some more serious work on this image in due course ;^)