1\/4000, f\/5.6, ISO 800, 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>\nTwelve days ago on Halloween I thought this Red-breasted Nuthatch was going to choke on a Douglas Fir cone bract. Usually they have to remove the bract from the cone and then discard it before they can get at the seed within the cone but this time the bract seemed to get caught in the back of the throat of the bird. I took about a dozen photos as the bird struggled to get rid of the bract. Here part of it can be seen at the back of the mouth.<\/p>\n
During processing I struggled with composition of the photo as much as the bird did with the bract as I tried to decide how to crop the image. The upside down bird is posed diagonally across the frame and looking in the same direction so I think either a horizontal or vertical composition would work but which one to go with?<\/p>\n
My first inclination was horizontal but with a caveat. I love the look, texture and color of Doug Fir cones and wanted to keep as much of these two in the photo as possible but with this composition I couldn’t keep very much of them in the frame without other negatives creeping in (a looser crop than I prefer or completely centering the bird vertically).<\/p>\n
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![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/red-breasted-nuthatch-3230-vertical-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-breasted-nuthatch-3230-vertical-ron-dudley\\"")
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A vertical composition includes more of those attractive cones but I have no more room at the top and I think there’s a little too much empty space below the bird. Taking more off the bottom makes the composition too square. Both versions of the photo have been cropped to exactly 45% of the original image (9MP out of 20) to keep the comparison as equal as possible.<\/p>\n
I know, it’s minutia that means more to me than to anyone else but during processing we’re sometimes hijacked by trivialities.<\/p>\n
So I finally said to hell with it and decided to post both versions. Neither one is ideal but I still like the photo so take your pick and ignore the other one.<\/p>\n
Ron<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Once again I couldn’t decide so you get both.<\/p>\n
Continue reading<\/span><\/i><\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78239,"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":[6,334,392,4308],"tags":[4805,916,4311,4309,4313,1357,311],"class_list":["post-78238","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bird-photography-methods","category-birds","category-feeding-bird-behaviors","category-red-breasted-nuthatches","tag-bracts","tag-composition","tag-douglas-fir-cones","tag-red-breasted-nuthatch","tag-sitta-canadensis","tag-tooele-county","tag-utah-2"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/red-breasted-nuthatch-3230-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1zzJh-klU","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78238","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=78238"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78238\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78238"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78238"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78238"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/featheredphotography.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/11\/red-breasted-nuthatch-3230-horizontal-ron-dudley.jpg\" "\\"red-breasted-nuthatch-3230-horizontal-ron-dudley\\"")
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