Northern Flicker (Hard at Work)

EdV wrote in post #3087450
EC was (is) one area that baffled the heck out of me. I could never figure out whether I need to go + or - and how much. What I am doing now is playing around a bit when I can. I am shooting at 0 then + and then - just to compare the differences. And some times when I know I need to go +, I am varying like +2/3 to +1 1/3 just to see the differences. That is helping me a lot. But I am still not real good at it.

And as far a lighting is concerned, I am now finding myself moving around a lot more looking for the best lighting instead of letting my unbridled enthusiasm run wild and immediately start shooting when I see a bird I want to photograph.

Again, thanks for the encouragement and support. I appreciate it.

That's the ticket! Best way to learn really...

As far as C&C goes...I'd crop the right part, right down the farthest right third of the tree to eliminate the blue that is present there too. I think it would be stronger compositionally. Good job on these though...hard to get close to them.

dancad wrote in post #3091978
As far as C&C goes...I'd crop the right part, right down the farthest right third of the tree to eliminate the blue that is present there too. I think it would be stronger compositionally. Good job on these though...hard to get close to them.

Thanks Dan. I am usually sensitive to not cropping too extremely and I usually like to keep the image to a 8x10 format. So when I crop to eliminate extraneous stuff and enlarge the bird, I usually try to crop to no more than 2000x1600 or 1500x1200. I have had 8x10 prints made of both and they have turned out well.

So where am I going with this? Well when I cropped these images to 1600x2000, I either had the Flicker centered and no blue to the right or the Flicker off to the left and blue to the right. I opted to keep the bird more to the left resulting in keeping the blue to the right. That at least was my rationale. I may go back and play with the cropping as you suggested to see how it looks.

Thanks for the feedback and something else to try. That's how I learn.

Nice set of shots Ed. I managed to photograph a Red-shafted excavating last week in B.C. It was the closest that I've been to a Northern Flicker yet.