Trogon Photo Tours

May 2016 - This month's newsletter considers the question, what makes a good bird photography image?  This is not to be confused with what makes an excellent bird photography image which will be the topic of next month's newsletter.  The genesis of the idea for this newsletter came during my most recent Arizona workshop.  After processing an image in front of the group, a participant wanted me to process an image that I didn't consider very good to see how much we could improve it, this led to a discussion about which images in a certain folder of shots from Ecuador we would consider to be good images and why.  This is a topic which sometimes comes up with beginner or intermediate nature photographers so I thought it would make a good topic for a newsletter.  These are certainly not my best images in this newsletter (although I do like most of them) just a sample from a few days of shooting in Ecuador.

Bananquit photographed January 2015, Mirador Rio Blanco Los Bancos, Ecuador.  Canon 7DII, 500F4 1.4x, 1/250 F8, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  This is the image that the participant asked me to process and this is after a standard optimization without any cloning etc.  The group pretty much agreed that this is not a good image.  I will start out with the few positive things it has going for it, the bird is pretty sharp and has good depth of field (everything is in focus except for the tail).  The other thing I would say is that the placement of the bird in the frame is pretty good (this is after cropping a bit).  Now for the not so good elements of the image.  First of all the quality of the lighting is quite poor.  The background is bright and the bird is a bit hazy. Unless it's a high key image that works well a bright background is generally not desirable in most bird photography images.  If you do have a bright background you want to have good contrast in the bird and we don't have that here.  The one thing I could have done differently in the field that would have made this a much better image would have been to use fill flash on it, throwing more light on the bird and at the same time reducing the amount of light on the background to darken it.  The next thing I would say about this shot is the setting isn't particularly very nice, it's a boring perch with no vegetation and the out of focus perch in the background is a distraction (of course with some work that could be taken out in post processing).   The last thing that makes the image not very good is the angle of the bird's head is facing away from the viewer.  For me this is the biggest problem with this particular image, if the bird were facing the viewer, with it's eye turned towards us, it might be worth spending more time in post processing trying to fix some of the various flaws in this image.  But whatever I did I wouldn't be able to fix the bird's head angle.  I am not even sure why this image ended up in the folder with the other images but I am glad it did as it was a good example of what makes a bird image not very good, even if it is sharp.  

Scrub Tanager photographed January 2015, Puembo, Ecuador.  Canon 7DII, 500F4 lens, 1/400 F7.1, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  This is the next shot that we covered.  Everyone in the group thought that this was a good image.  Reasons cited were that the background is nice, diffused and complementary to the bird, the image is sharp with good depth of field, there are no distracting elements in the image,  the composition is fine and the head angle of the bird is reasonably good.  The lighting which was bright overcast is fine if not excellent.  The perch which I did not set up was deemed to be average (it's a bit large for the size of the bird). 

Masked Water Tyrant photographed December 2015, Las Macadamias, Manabi, Ecuador.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/500 F8, iso 160, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, Gitzo tripod, Wimberley head.  Most of the group thought this was a really good image but some had mixed feelings about the motion blur on the wings and tail.  Some really liked it and some didn't.   It's partially a matter of taste and I think partially sharpness is emphasized so much in bird photography that when there is something that is a bit different, some don't know what to make of it.  My analysis is I like this image a lot, the head is tack sharp and it's position is good and the wings and tail show the motion blur, I particularly like the tail.  The background is fine, the lighting is reasonably good, the perch is not great but in this composition it's kind of minimized.  This is a difficult exposure in sunlight to get some detail in both the blacks and the whites, I think I have lost a bit of detail in the whites but the exposure is reasonably good.   By the way I intentionally shot this at a lower iso and shutter speed than I normally would to show the wing and tail blur.  

Torrent Duck photographed January 2015 on the Rio Chalpi River near Guango Lodge, Ecuador.  Canon 5D3 500F4 1.4x 1/1250 F6.3, iso 1600, Av mode, evaluative metering -0.3, handheld.  The group really liked this image and I think it's a good image as well.  It's a good look at the duck which stands out nicely against the dark background.   Like the previous shot this would normally be a difficult exposure but since there wasn't direct sunlight on the bird it was easier and there is good detail in both the blacks and the whites.  The head angle and position of the bird in the frame are good.  On the negative side this is a fairly large crop on which I had to apply a fair amount of noise reduction to the background, this results in a haziness to parts of the image.  But on the whole I like this image a lot and it's probably my best shot of this species which can be difficult to get close to.  The reasons for the fairly high shutter speed and iso were that the bird was moving a lot, it would stop for a moment and then swim into the stream and that I was handholding a lot of lens and wanted to make sure it turned out sharp. 

Rusty Flowerpiercer photographed December 2015, Puembo, Ecuador.  Canon 7DII 500F4 1/125 F4.5, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  Some of the photographers in the group thought this was not a very good bird photography image.  The reasons listed were that the bird is partially obscured by the vegetation and the flowers particularly the bright one on the lower left compete for attention with the bird.  One photographer thought if the flowerpiercer were looking at the main flowers instead of away from them that would have improved the composition quite a bit and I would agree.  My critique of the image would also include that the tail is a bit too close to the top of the frame.  On the positive side the head is quite sharp and the head angle/eye contact are excellent.  This is the uncropped version that was in the folder we were viewing and I explained that I would crop the image differently to avoid most of the bright flower on the left and to put the bird in a better position in the frame. 

Rusty Flowerpiercer, Puembo, Ecuador.  This is the same shot as above but with more processing.  The main adjustments I made were to crop it to vertical and then add some extra sharpening just to the face as it didn't look tack sharp after the crop.   We didn't reprocess this image at the time as we needed to get back out shooting so I will just have to give you my opinion, but I think this image is much stronger as reprocessed.  My focus goes straight to the bird here as opposed to bouncing between it and the flowers.  I think the bits of orange throughout add to the image although that's personal taste and others may not agree.  In the end, it's my best image of a species that is not very easy to photograph as it's small, moves around a lot and tends to live in drier highland areas which I do not spend a lot of time in (as opposed to highland wet areas which have a lot more species and we therefore spend a lot of time in).  I think as processed here it's a pretty good image.  This gets to another discussion we had which is how much can post processing improve an image?  My general take is that post processing is important but not as important at taking the image in the field.  You can improve an image but you generally can't make a poor image a good image or a fair image a great image. I could write a lot just about that topic but it's not the main subject of this newsletter.

Western Emerald, male photographed January 2015 at Puembo, Ecuador.  Canon 7DII 500F4 1/2500 F5, iso 800, Av mode, evaluative metering at 0, handheld.  This was the workshop groups favorite image of the ones they viewed.  They liked the flight pose, the habitat shown, the fact that the bird was pointing towards the flower and a few of them said they like this kind of natural type of hummingbird image more than a studio like multi-flash shot.  I like the image quite a bit as well, if I had to nitpick I would say that while there are many good elements to this shot it would have been even better if the hummingbird had been feeding directly at the flower which would have put the hummingbird and flower in the same focal plane and provided better depth of field for the flower, in addition a little fill flash would have helped to fill in the dark areas on the body.  This provides a nice transition to what will be the topic of next month's newsletter, what makes an excellent bird photograph compared to merely a good or very good bird photograph.

To conclude I will summarize the elements that I think make a good bird photography image.  Not every image has to satisfy all of these but if most or all of them are there we can usually conclude an image is good.  These are not in any particular order of importance.  Note that some images will break some of these guidelines and still be a good image. 

1) The bird or at least the bird's head and eye are sharp.  The exception to this is when you are intentionally making an artistic blur shot that works out well.

2) The pose of the bird is good, the most basic part of this is that the head angle is turned a bit towards the viewer and not away from the viewer.  

3) The background is muted and if it is not muted, it has attractive habitat in it. 

4) The image doesn't have overly distracting elements in it that take away from our enjoyment of viewing the bird.

5) The bird is properly exposed. 

6) The composition is reasonably good.  I have written whole newsletters on bird photography composition.  One of them is here.

7) The image is not overly noisy, oversharpened or overprocessed.

I realize that not everyone will like this sort of formulaic approach to the question of what makes a good bird photograph but it is a question that continues to come up with beginning and intermediate bird photographers so I thought it best to try and write down some guidelines which photographers can measure their images against.  When it comes to evaluating individual images there will always be differences of opinion and subjectivity.

For what it's worth here is how I would order the images presented in terms of how good I think they are. 

1) Masked Water Tyrant - Has all the elements plus an inspired pose which shows interesting behavior and motion.  One negative is that the exposure is a bit marginal due to difficult lighting.

2) Torrent Duck - A very nice image of this duck in an attractive setting.  The background is  a bit hazy due to the large crop and resulting noise reduction.

3) Western Emerald - A very nice image of this hummingbird in flight showing the irridesence.  Ideally the flower would be in focus as well here.

4) Rusty Flowerpiercer (cropped version) - A good but certainly not perfect image of a difficult species.  The head angle is excellent, the tail is too close to the top of the frame.

5) Scrub Tanager - A good, solid image of this species but kind of a boring shot. 

6) Bananaquit - A mediocre shot at best, not a good bird photography image.  Poor head angle and poor lighting outweigh the fact that it is a sharp image with a decent composition.

You could also put them into tiers

Tier 1 - Very good, difficult to separate between Masked Water Tyrant, Torrent Duck and Western Emerald.

Tier 2 - Good, Scrub Tanager and Rusty Flowerpiercer (after cropping)

Tier 3 - Medicore - Banaquit 

As I said next month I will discuss what I think makes an excellent as opposed to a good bird photography image.