The title has double meaning. The photo above is the “as shot” image. This little Pied Kingfisher may have a meal that is too big for him to swallow. It is a nice “behavior shot” of these birds as this is a typical catch. The sun is at a nice angle as there is a nice ‘catch light’ gleaming in the bird’s eye. The whites may be slightly blown (overexposed), but the histogram implies adequate recovery can be made.
So what is wrong with this shot? Well, to begin with, this bird is tiny and the area captured is too large to let one appreciate the bird and his meal. The second concern with the original is that there is a lifeless sky. Also, a concern in the shot is that the detail of the tree limb is lost in the darker reaches of the histogram. All of these are correctable and this was shot with a camera with ample pixels to crop, so with this in mind, I made adjustment to the image below and presented it to my “camera club” friends on safari with me.
Pied Kingfisher with breakfast - First crop - copyright 2009: P. B. Eleazer
As you can see, I have done a nice job of recovering some color to the sky. The general diagonals/triangle formed by the bird posture is nicer; however, the experts agree that I still have a fatal flaw in this image. That lower limb still draws the eye too strongly from the bird to the bottom darkness of the frame. So with that in mind, I present a second and improved crop:
I love the change and learned a valuable lesson from feedback. The eye can only digest so much, so fill the frame with ‘the good stuff’ and minimize the need for digestion of distracting elements!
I guess I could have titled this ‘seven tips from a little bird’, but regardless of title, I hope you have gained from this exercise.
- Photo Tip 1: Minimize extreme contrast, non-essential elements in the image.
- Photo Tip 2: Look for interesting behavior in wildlife.
- Photo Tip 3: Try to shoot at an angle that allows the sun to provide a sparkle (known in photography as catch light) in the eye of the animal.
- Photo Tip 4: Look for angles in the composition that can lead the eye. The bird’s posture and beak provide a nice triangle in this image.
- Photo Tip 5: While you want to “fill the frame” when shooting to maximize detail, but remember that with today’s high pixel count cameras, strong crops can be done in processing.
- Photo Tip 6: Let the shape of the final composition be driven by the shape needed to balance the subject. A giraffe neck may need a vertical/portrait crop, but for this squatty little Pied Kingfish, a fairly square crop works.
- Photo Tip 7: You want to fill the frame, but you also need to give wildlife a little room to move into. In this image, the space above and to the side of the bird presents needed negative space to allow the image not to feel cramped.