Complementary colors can make common species look uncommonly good.
1/2000, f/6.3, ISO 500, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF500mm f/4L IS II USM +1.4 tc, not baited, set up or called in
I found this Horned Lark just over a week ago near Grantsville, Utah. Though many colors are similar throughout the image the bird still stands out because of the light and shadows and I think those complementary colors are a big plus. With the head at this angle to the sun there’s just enough extra light on the face to make it “pop” (normally I dislike using that word in a photographic context but that’s another story…) against that background.
I love my primary bird lens (Canon EF500mmL IS II USM) for many reasons but near the top of that list is the quality of the bokeh it produces. Bokeh is defined as “the visual quality of the out-of-focus areas of a photographic image, especially as rendered by a particular lens”. As I’ve said before, backgrounds can make or break an image and I like this one a lot.
That’s not to say the image has no flaws. If I had my “druthers” I’d have more depth of field to get the tail and the front of the rock a little sharper but then the background wouldn’t be quite as pleasingly soft as it is.
Tradeoffs…
Ron
Its a marvelous shot Ron!!
Charlotte
Wish they were common here. Cannot remember the last time I saw one. Thanks for sharing the image.
No ‘just’ about it.
A small bird – which pays dividends to those who stop, look, marvel.
Thanks Ron.
I like it.. It’s very soft and appealing. Not soft as in not sharp but soft as in visually. 😀
Thank you, Arwen. And I do know what kind of “softness” you mean.
I also really like all the colors, the way the background picks up the colors in the bird. I was actually able to see that the foreground was a bit soft, but somehow that really doesn’t matter in this photo. When I first looked at this shot my immediate thought was that the bird looked like it was about to take off. I’m curious to know if it was about to fly when you took the shot?
“I’m curious to know if it was about to fly when you took the shot?”
Actually it stayed put for a long time after I took this shot, Susan. I just went back and looked at my other images of this bird and I photographed it for 6 more minutes on this perch which is almost unheard of.
I love the gradations of colors and textures in this image…the soft blur of the background, the subtle smoothness and echoed colors of the feathers…punctuated by sharp detail and in contrast, the obviously hardness of the rock. The background (bokeh) really complements the bird. In painting, I often find the background the hardest part to pull off…just finished two paintings, one of an eagle about to snatch a fish, against a soft, early morning lake-water background and another, kind of impressionistic one of nasturtiums, a bright, warm splash of color against a cool, dark background…I didn’t sweat over the focals, but certainly did over the backgrounds! I love the color redundancy in this picture…I’ll bet dollars to donuts, chocolate, of course (is there another kind?) that you do, too…because, though almost monochromatic, the bird still stands out…beautiful!
I simply can’t imagine trying to paint, Patty – my talent in that regard matches that of my singing. True torture would be forcing someone to look at a painting I tried to do as they listened to me “sing” at the same time.
Thank goodness for photography…
I started following your blog after your interview with Prathap on his blog. I really enjoy your photography but also your explanations of what’s going on with your subject.. I’m trying to learn more by looking at your settings too. You mentioned the softness of the tail and rock in this photo; the f stop is 6.3 which is what most of your photos are taken. Is the softness due to being closer to the bird? You talked about the number of decisions that you need to make with bird photography; do you have a post where you go through your steps in determining how you will take a photo? In one of your posts you said you don’t want to bore us by being too techy, but I find those posts really helpful. I look forward to your post each day as it is a nice way to start the day😄. Thanks for sharing and for continuing to be a teacher. Once a teacher, always a teacher.
Chris, that interview with Prathap on Nature Photography Simplified was a lot of fun. I just wish I’d had some input as to which images he chose to feature. Nearly all of them were older ones and it didn’t include some of my best. Oh well…
The softness of the tail is due to both how close I was to the bird and my choice of aperture.
I don’t believe I’ve done a post like the one you mention but it would probably be a good idea to do so. Stay tuned, hopefully it’ll happen.
Thank you for the thoughtful comment.
Handsome Portrait Ron!
Thank you, John.
It is a beautiful picture for all the reasons you mentioned. I do love the Bokeh in the photo – it does make it “pop” 🙂 Trying to just imagine and set that up just wouldn’t happen. Always tradeoffs. 🙂
Yup, tradeoffs are a huge part of photography, Judy. There’s always lots of decisions to make and when your subject is birds they have to be made very, very quickly.
Speaking of decisions, when I was teaching I used to think that probably no one makes more decisions in a given amount of time than a classroom teacher but I now know that bird photographers are high on that list too…
Ron: You are my first blog I have ever followed and it looks like I chose well. This post with the info, thoughts and process is just what I was looking for. My eye naturally went to the bird’s head & eye and I didn’t even notice the rock or the tail being a bit soft until I read what you had written. Thanks for posting and allowing me to follow. Zaphir Shamma
Welcome aboard, Zaphir and thank you for the kind words.
Ron -something has changed for me reading your posts. It is being adjusted to fit on my screen. Before I had to manually adjust it.
Thanks for the heads up, Mark. I assume this change is a good thing?
I’ll be in contact via email.