« Thank You Very Little | Main | Quote »
January 12, 2007
Friday Feathers - Flubs
Last week when I posted that Friday Feathers would be in a holding pattern until I had new photos, reader Steve asked me to post some imperfect photos in the meantime. I thought this was a terrific suggestion, just to give you an idea of how hypercritical I am about my photographs.
Below is a recent photograph I took of a White-breasted Nuthatch. Using my Tamron 200-500mm zoom lens on my Nikon D50, I pointed the camera up toward a nearby tree and spotted the Nuthatch way up high on a lone branch. The sky was a brilliant blue and looking through the viewfinder, the setup seemed perfect.
I took the shot, checked it on the display and it looked good. When I finish my shooting for the day, I then transfer the photographs to my laptop and review what I've shot. With the photographs ported into Nikon's Picture Project software, I view them in slideshow mode and immediately delete the obvious blurred and botched images. All files are saved to my desktop, backed up to an external CD and then further inspection takes place via Photoshop or Apple's iPhoto.
To me, I've taken a good photograph when I enlarge it and everything is crystal clear and in focus and nothing is blurred, backgrounds are pleasing to the eye and nothing is distracting, such as errant tree branches, etc. I really liked the photograph above until I enlarged it and saw that the bird was out of focus:
As a beginning photographer, I have taken numerous photographs and soon realized that I didn't want to spend a lot of time altering a photograph in Photoshop or iPhoto. Tweaking a photo (brightness, contrast, etc.) is okay once in a while, but I am aiming for those photos where it isn't necessary to fix anything. I now save only those photographs which meet that criteria, even though I managed to find some in my photo library that fall under the "flubs" category.
I'll continue posting flubs on Fridays until, as stated previously, I have photographs of birds that haven't appeared previously on this blog. Sure, I have many different photos of birds, but each bird has already had its 10 minutes of fame in this space. One more thing. Contrary to the impression that I have a huge garden, I am not that fortunate. The majority of the bird photographs featured here have been taken outside of NYC.
Cindy
Comments
I'm sure he moved.
Your images have been so awesome that honestly, your flubs are better than my best shots!
Brain matter deposited by: susan on January 12, 2007 12:58 PM
I think you are a very good photographer Cindy.
And if I am not mistaken you have a lot of fun photographing.
And last but not least I think your approach is very pro.
Brain matter deposited by: Joost on January 12, 2007 3:13 PM
hey, don't toss the flubs .. in the future you may find it worth the photoshop effort.. thats why I have so many crappy photos on my gallery ;)
but really .. its harder to get the composition
correct than it is to fix (or artisize) the focus,
in many cases blur may actually help the interpretation of the picture ...
fuzzy or not that first picture is pretty cool good thing that never hit the trash .. at smaller sizes (like gift cards ;) it'd be just fine ...
Brain matter deposited by: sdy on January 14, 2007 3:11 AM
Steve - got the gift card hint. ;-)
I DO like that photograph, regardless. And true about a certain amount of blur -- like backgrounds, which I do all the time when photographing birds.
Joost - thank you! It is fun but challenging (which is okay. I like challenges.)
Susan - yes, he did. Busy enjoying his lunch, that one. And that's the challenge of photographing birds in that they move -- ALL the time! BTW, I've seen some of your photos and found them lovely!
Brain matter deposited by: Cindy on January 14, 2007 9:03 PM
Bring on the Friday Flubs!
Brain matter deposited by: Greg on January 16, 2007 8:05 AM