Blue Peafowl

Hi everyone! I'd like to put a photo I took yesterday up for critique. Grateful for any kind of constructive criticism.

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IMO, lighting's flat. Backgrounds too distracting with no separation from main subject....less DOF needed.
Stick in front is disturbing the balance. If that branch was half as long it would form a nice diagonal from the bottom left corner, across the head of the bird, then out the top right frame of the image. Being about as tall as the bird and larger, it looks like the main subject and takes all the focus from the bird. You could probably PS that bit.

Peacocks are one of the most beautiful birds, with tremendously colorful plumage which they are most often ready to display "proud as a peacock". Unfortunately this speciman wasn't as ready to cooperate. Honestly the photo looks like a typical snapshot which doen't really make the most of the subject. A profile shot which captures the odd kink in its neck and the beautful tail feathers are laying down and unattractive. Unfortunately not a very memorable shot. I'd wait for a better pose and move in close to capture the wondeful feather detail.

Thanks a lot for your opinions!

GtrPlyr wrote in post #12540204
IMO, lighting's flat. Backgrounds too distracting with no separation from main subject....less DOF needed.
Stick in front is disturbing the balance.

I've noticed the lighting to be flat in quite a few of my pictures. How would I go about getting that right in the first place, or correcting it afterwards?

CaptainNuss wrote in post #12541047
Thanks a lot for your opinions!


I've noticed the lighting to be flat in quite a few of my pictures. How would I go about getting that right in the first place, or correcting it afterwards?

Generally speaking, shooting outdoors when the sun is shining rather than overcast, the best angle of light is gonna be a while after sunrise and a while before sunset.
Otherwise approach your subject differently so inadequate light conditions is not the major focus.

Then of course in post processing you can always creatively darken and blur parts of an image so your subject stands out better.


I tried cropping it but, like the other poster says, its not a really well composed shot so even some kind of crop will probably not save it. Plus, I don't know what kind of processing you did but those blurred out trees in the background look really funky.

Just chalk it up to experience and keep shooting.

GtrPlyr wrote in post #12541249
Just chalk it up to experience and keep shooting.

That's why I'm here. Thanks a lot for your input!

complete bird would have been nice.

You've got some nice wing detail there. However, for me the money shot is when they display.

led hed and corkneyfonz, thanks for your comments.

corkneyfonz wrote in post #12546769
You've got some nice wing detail there. However, for me the money shot is when they display.

Yeah, it's definitely highly impressive. At one point, three of the males basically went crazy displaying their feathers, which made me a little uneasy at first because I didn't know how to interpret it... We tried to get some shots of that, but two problems arose. For me, it's hard to get good image quality out of the EF 55-200, so most of the shots whose framing I liked didn't turn out too well IQ-wise. (well, it's of course not entirely due to the lense; I still have a lot to learn about correct exposures) Second, I find it very challenging to get a good composition with these birds.

I plan to have a better lense by next year, and we want to go back to that particular zoo then. In the meantime, I'll happily shoot away and see what I can learn.