Trogon Photo Tours

July 2016 - This month's newsletter considers the question what makes a bird photograph an excellent image?  If you remember last newsletter I discussed what I think makes a good bird photograph.  You can read it here.  In this newsletter I will give my opinion on what I think takes an image to the next level, while also discussing the subjectivity of the question.  It includes images from several different trips.  

Collared Inca photographed January 2015 at Guango Lodge, Ecuador.  Canon 5D3, 300F4 lens, 1/200 F20, iso 640, Canon 580ex plus 5 Nikon SB-26 Slave Flashes set at 1/16, artificial background.  I think this image has many of the elements of an excellent bird photograph including beautiful colors, good action and feeding behavior, a nice composition with good lines, a clean background to focus our attention on the bird and good lighting due to the flashes. 

Western Emerald photographed January 2015 in Puembo, Ecuador.  Canon 7D2 500F4 1/2500 F5, iso 800, handheld.  I included this image in last month's newsletter as I thought was a good, but not excellent bird photography image and our workshop group critiqued it in Arizona.  I am including it here because the feedback I have received on the image from some photographers has been very favorable.  This was the favorite image of most of the Arizona workshop participants of the 10 or so images we reviewed from Ecuador.  What it has going for it are a nice flight pose, beautiful iridescence on the body and a very natural setting, obviously not a setup shot.  This is something we talked about during the workshop, some photographers prefer a setup looking studio type of shot and some prefer a more natural looking shot.  Although I work with setups quite a bit I all things being equal I would prefer to get an excellent non setup shot.  But it's more difficult.   I think this one comes close but some fill flash would have helped improve the lighting here and maybe put this one over the top.  I also would have liked the bird lined up more with the flower.  But I include it to show it's somewhat subjective and what one person considers an excellent bird photograph another may not. There are a fair number of photographers who would prefer this shot over the first one. 

Gila Woodpecker photographed May 2016 at the Pond at Elephant Head, Amado, AZ.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/2000 F6.3, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  This is a setup perch with food placed on it.  This was taken on our most recent Arizona photo workshop.  It has many elements which in my opinion make it an excellent shot including a really good pose with the wings out and grabbing the side of the cactus, the cactus is an excellent perch, it's lovely late afternoon light and it's a nice clean background with a bit of variation in it.  So it has all the elements we covered last month which make a good bird image including good sharpness throughout, a clean background and a good head angle.  But the special perch, unique pose and beautiful lighting take this up another level.  

Lesser Nighthawk photographed May 2016, Amado, AZ.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/1600 F5.6, iso 1250, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  This is another shot from our recent Arizona workshop.  We found a pond by the side of the road where dozens of this species were feeding and the group wanted to spend a bit of time working on flight shots with them.  The top side flight pose with beautiful late afternoon light makes this shot for me.  My favorite flight shots are ones which show the top side of both wings, you just get much better lighting and detail seeing the topside rather than the underside.  Some photographers don't consider degree of difficulty of a shot or uniqueness of a shot important factors in whether a photograph is an excellent shot or not.  I do think they are worth considering however.  In this case photographing a nighthawk in flight is fairly difficult because they dart around like large swallows.  Also it's fairly unusual to get above one, get the top side of the wings and have a background other than sky.  I googled "Lesser Nighthawk in Flight" images and I didn't see any where the top side of the bird was shown well with a background other than sky. On the down side this is only about 30% of the original image.  For me the top side flight pose, superior lighting and uniqueness of shot all translate to this being an excellent shot.

Gambel's Quail babies photographed May 2016 at the Pond at Elephant Head, Amado, AZ.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1/800 F11, iso 400, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  I like this image a lot.  The main thing it has going for it are the cuteness and number of the subject matter, baby quail (10 all in reasonbly good focus).  However the light is average as they tend to come out after the sun is up a bit and I don't particularly like the background much - it's too in focus as I was shooting down on the birds and needed to use a large depth of field to get them all in focus.  I also didn't get their full reflections in which if I had it would have bumped this up a notch or two.  So for me this one doesn't quite make the cut as an excellent shot, although just because of the great cuteness of the subject matter I could see others disagreeing with my opinion. 

Bald Eagle and Great Blue Heron photographed July 2011 in Kitsap County, WA.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/1600 F9, iso 400, handheld.  This is a case where I think the dramatic pose of the eagle coming in on a Great Blue Heron make this a special image.  The other elements in this image are not that great, the lighting is good but not great and the background is busy.  But I would consider this an excellent image and I think most other bird photographers would as well.  The incoming pose of the eagle and it's interaction with the heron are so strong that they trump the other elements in the image which are not ideal. This image illustrates that if the subjects poses and interaction are dramatic and unique enough it can take an image up to that specieal level even if a few of the other elements of the image are just average (in this case the lighting and the background). 

Orange-cheeked Parrots and Cobalt-winged Parakeets photographed November 2013 at Napo Wildlife Center, Ecuador.  Canon 7D 500F4 1/40 F5.6, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering -1.3, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  This is more of an artistic shot, my goal here was to get the parakeets and parrots on the ground sharp and to show the motion blur of the wings of the flying birds.  There is so little light in this area there was no chance of stopping them in flight.  I like this image quite a bit and I would consider it to be excellent but I think some bird photographers would disagree.  I showed this image to a workshop participant who used to own a fine art gallery and she was adamant that it was my best image.  The image has great colors, an interesting setting and it kind of tells the story of these birds coming and going to collect the clay they use in their diet.  The rainbow blur of the wings of the Orange-cheeked Parrot exiting on the right is unique and balanced nicely by the Cobalt-winged Parakeet exting on the left.  I think judging these more artistic type of images is more subjective than most, some people will love this image and some won't like it very much. 

Last  month I laid out the elements that I thought you needed most of to produce a good bird photography image, including good sharpness at least on the head, a decent head angle, a good composition, a background that isn't overly distracting, the exposure is good and the image isn't too noisy or overly processed (oversharpened etc). 

We have gone through some images and now I will list the elements that make a bird photography image an excellent as opposed to just a good one.  They will generally have almost all of the elements listed to produce a good bird image but then at least some of the following to take it up a level. 

1) Beautiful color scheme

2) Excellent composition

3) Compelling action

4) Beautiful lighting

5) Interesting or unusual behavior or interaction

6) A particularly good perch or setting

7) A particularly difficult or rare subject photographed well

As a moderator for the avian gallery at www.naturephotographers.net I am charged with picking the bird photography shot of the week every other week or at least nominating a few shots to the editors.  I don't walk through each of these criterion when I look at a shot but they constitute the elements which I think add up to a shot that I would consider as one of the best for the week.  A shot that I nominate will have at least a few of the 7 elements listed above. 

I have analyzed these images already but if I had to summarize I think most serious bird photographers including myself would consider The Collared Inca, The Gila Woodpecker, the Lesser Nighthawk and the Eagle interacting with the Heron to be excellent shots.  I would consider the parrot clay lick shot to be an excellent shot but again because it is more of an artistic shot, I think the range of opinions on that shot would be higher.  Lastly I wouldn't consider either the Western Emerald shot or the baby Gambel's Quail shot to be excellent shots, I think they are both good.  But I am sure some photographers or judges  would rate them more highly. Just as some photographers would rate some of the images that I judged to be excellent not as highly.