Birds from Central Brazil

Juano

I moved to Brasilia, Brazil a few months ago. Here are some first impressions.

1 Southern Lapwing

2 Squirrel Cuckoo

3 Northern Crested Cara-Cara

4 Buff-necked Ibis

5, 6 Burrowing owls

7 Pequi flower

kurzvorzwoelf

Love the owls! Especially the grim looking one, he's like "Wtf dude, what are you staring at? My wife?" hehe. They are such interesting creatures. I was always under impression they'd be rather sleeping at daytime

Nice perspectives they've been all shot from and congratulations for the sharp shots. Tried myself to shoot birds, I think I have to train a litte more Only the bokeh at #2 is a little too harsh on my eyes.

Juano

Thanks I agree with you on the quality of the bokeh on 2. The owls are fun to shoot, they're not shy. The lapwings are downright aggressive.

Stumblebum

Absolute wow set Cristobal!

I mean what can one say with shots like this....but I will....

For #2 the twig on top left that is in focus.....bit distracting and would explore if it can be cloned out....

For #4 I feel emphatically that it needs to be cropped below the tree stump...and little twig or rock in bottom left corner is cloning out candidate...

Cheers Cristobal!

Juano

Thanks Taz. You have the sharpest cloning eye, I agree on both counts.

photo303

Nice Burrowing Owl shots.

puzzledpaul

Some interesting subject matter, for sure.
Re comments - Sb has nailed 4 - but I'd also wonder if this is the orig uncropped frame - offering other possibilities?
The biggest main comment is that of getting lower - there's a surprise coming from me

For 1, if lower, you'd have the opportunity of losing the streak of darker bg behind the bird's body. Comp is very tight too imo, with a rear quarter shot - if bird had turned head towards cam - and you'd still got a catchlight it would probably have been better, even in this position? I'd suggest there's a better crop too, even keeping 2:3, losing bits off top / bottom / left. this'd leave you with less twig cloning and would also de-centralise the bird's head even more than it is now. You'd have to really do something about the 2 light blobs of bg tho.

3 the tree is killing this imo - way too close and destroying the bird's head shape / silhouette. Even being low wouldn't have helped with this shot because the tree is so close

4 Together with comments already made, being lower would have made the (height of the) horizontal band of 'spotty' bg fairly narrow and less intrusive. It would've made the bg tree far worse a problem to get rid of .. but in doing so would've made it more obvious in frame at the time of taking the pic - so framing pic, without it showing in viewfinder would have been uppermost in your mind when pressing shutter.

As always - just my thoughts, feel free to ignore.

pp

Juano

PP great comments! This is exactly what I was looking for! I will try to rework some of them and possibly try to re-shoot some especially 3. Many thanks!

Hunter58

Hi Cristobal,

You will have some awesome birds to shoot in Brazil and I agree with the comments above about the cropping and cloning but there is one important thing I would like to add and that is the rule of thirds. If you look at all of the shots you posted you'll notice that all of the subjects are centered in the frame. The rule of thirds will make your shots much more interesting and the other thing that goes along with this in shooting wildlife is you want the subject looking into the frame. The easiest way to describe that is more space in front of the subject and less behind it. I hope you don't mind that I took the Ibis shot and did a little rework on it to show you an example of what I'm talking about. Since I didn't have your original shot I had to add to the canvas and clone in the background on the right side of the image, then I cropped using the the rule of thirds as mentioned above. I did a little sharpening and noise reduction as well. It will be exciting to see your work from Brazil!

Pacificklaus

Smoothly done shots!

Juano

@Hunter58 said:
Hi Cristobal,

You will have some awesome birds to shoot in Brazil and I agree with the comments above about the cropping and cloning but there is one important thing I would like to add and that is the rule of thirds. If you look at all of the shots you posted you'll notice that all of the subjects are centered in the frame. The rule of thirds will make your shots much more interesting and the other thing that goes along with this in shooting wildlife is you want the subject looking into the frame. The easiest way to describe that is more space in front of the subject and less behind it. I hope you don't mind that I took the Ibis shot and did a little rework on it to show you an example of what I'm talking about. Since I didn't have your original shot I had to add to the canvas and clone in the background on the right side of the image, then I cropped using the the rule of thirds as mentioned above. I did a little sharpening and noise reduction as well. It will be exciting to see your work from Brazil!

Thank you for the re-work and comment.

Juano

@Pacificklaus said:
Smoothly done shots!

Thanks