{"id":55346,"date":"2018-01-02T06:05:34","date_gmt":"2018-01-02T13:05:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.featheredphotography.com\/blog\/?p=55346"},"modified":"2018-01-02T06:05:34","modified_gmt":"2018-01-02T13:05:34","slug":"the-little-things-that-can-make-or-break-our-images","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/2018\/01\/02\/the-little-things-that-can-make-or-break-our-images\/","title":{"rendered":"The Little Things That Can Make Or Break Our Images"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bird photography is largely a game of chance, particularly in action shots or when our subjects are in flight. Many things can go wrong and it really\u00a0burns my butt\u00a0when everything else comes together except for a single chance event out of many.<\/p>\n

I’d almost\u00a0prefer to\u00a0botch the shot entirely.<\/p>\n

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1\/1600, f\/6.3, ISO 1250, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

As common as they are I think wild male\u00a0Mallards are beautiful ducks and I especially enjoy photographing them in flight. I photographed this one\u00a0six days ago as it came in to land on a local pond. I love the soft light on the sharp bird in flight (a difficult combination), the intense eye contact, the\u00a0flight posture and most of the background.<\/p>\n

But those two birds\u00a0on the water behind the left wing of the\u00a0Mallard, a coot and a\u00a0Pied-billed Grebe,\u00a0ruin the shot for me because they’re just too distracting. I got 20 photos\u00a0of this\u00a0duck in flight but this was the only one where the bird was large enough in the frame for\u00a0good detail and also very sharp.<\/p>\n

So wouldn’t you know\u00a0it, those two interlopers in the background photobombed my shot.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

1\/2500, f\/6.3, ISO 1000, Canon 7D Mark II, Canon EF 500mm f\/4L IS II USM + EF 1.4 III Extender, not baited, set up or called in<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday the coots on the pond were particularly feisty (even for coots) and I had high hopes for this image when I quickly\u00a0previewed it on my camera screen in the field. I love action\/behavior shots that tell a story and that foot in the air of the fleeing\u00a0but otherwise submerged\u00a0coot really tickles my fancy, especially because that very foot is splashing water into the face of the aggressor.<\/p>\n

But so much of the potential of the image is lost because we can’t see the face and eye of the coot on the right. I keep imagining how much more dramatic the image would be if we could see that “angry” red eye and the rest of the coots head in this antagonistic situation. It was the\u00a0vagaries of chance that put the spray in front of the face and\u00a0prevented it.<\/p>\n

Sometimes we get lucky and sometimes we don’t.\u00a0It’s all\u00a0part of the thrill of bird photography but knowing that doesn’t make it\u00a0any less painful when Lady Luck messes with our shots. And our minds. If you ask me she’s really no lady at all.<\/p>\n

Once again my old mantra comes to mind –\u00a0“Bird photography ain’t easy”.<\/p>\n

Ron<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bird photography is largely a game of chance, particularly in action shots or when our subjects are in flight.<\/p>\n

Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55348,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1051,334,394,1172],"tags":[1052,1173,140,146,1054,213,3793],"class_list":["post-55346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-american-coots","category-birds","category-fighting-bird-behaviors","category-mallard-waterfowl","tag-american-coot","tag-anas-platyrhynchos","tag-fighting","tag-flight","tag-fulica-americana","tag-mallard","tag-photobomb"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/01\/mallard-2741-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-eoG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55346"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55346\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}