Remember last month when I said I took a lot of bird photos? I wasn’t kidding. I like to think I improved a little bit from the previous month and I generally like these photos more. So here you are, lockdown birdpocalypse - part 2.

Flower shots

I’ll get these out of the way first.

I don’t have too much to say about these. I kinda like them, but they aren’t super interesting. I’m not really sure what I could to improve them as is. Maybe they need a better composition.

And back to birds

This is one of my favourites. I really like the framing and the pose of the bird. The lighting and colours also work quite well with the white background, so there’s a good amount of contrast with the subject.

There are 2 main things I would fix with this photo: exposure and framing. I think this could have been pushed up a stop without overexposing the kowhai flowers, which would have given a bit more detail to the body of the bird. Its quite dark as it is, even with trying to recover some of that in lightroom. For the framing, I wish the tail of the tui wasn’t cut off. I think it would look nicer with the whole thing in the frame. But with birds you sometimes have to take what you get.

Another of my favourites. I love the portrait quality to this one, it feels almost like he was posing for me. I think the composition works fairly well too.

I would like it if there was a little more light and detail on the body of the bird. Its tricky with the tui because they’re so dark. But I think i probably could have pushed it to 1600 ISO.

I like this one, specifically because of how busy it is. It looks a little like the bird is just lost in all those blossoms. I think I might have pushed the exposure too much for the blossoms, they look a little overdone. And of course I wish the bird was in a nicer pose.

The second one is a variation of the same idea, but I think it pulls it off a little better. The highlights don’t look as blown and the bird is in a nicer pose.

This is the closest I got to getting a good shot of a tui in flight. This one is very average - out of frame, not enough light, motion blur - but its a start. The next one I take will be better and eventually i’ll get a good one. Just gotta keep practicing.

I like these two. To me they show off the prescence of the Tui when they aren’t scrabbling for nectar. The biggest blemish I see on these is the focus/blur on the first one. Luckily it’s only really noticeable when you zoom right in.

I really liked this one when I first saw it, but looking at it again later it really seems a little too busy. Theres a lot going on in the background and foreground that distracts from the subject, and the colours don’t really harmonize that well. I think a tighter crop might help from some of the background, but I don’t know what to do about the pink mixing with the yellow. Maybe I could recolour them yellow and hope its not noticable? Sidenote, see if you can spot where I photoshopped this picture :)

So the first one definitely needs more emphasis on the bird. Currently its too dark and blends into the background too much, which also makes the flower stand out too much. It might be hard to share the attention given how bright and contrasted the flower is.

The second one works well in my opinion - if you don’t mind the power line. Personally, I don’t mind it, but I can see how it would distract from the main point of the image. Aside from that, I like pretty much everything else about the photo.

Love both of these. The first is a little annoying with the focus on the body, but I like the lil tongue sticking out.

The second one executes the idea better, though I wish the top of the frame was a litttttle bit higher. But you can really see that gorgeous coloring on the Tui when the light hits it. I think it contrasts really well with the yellow of the kowhai flowers.

I love the level of detail I managed to get on this one. Getting close enough to get this detail without spooking the animal is something I found challenging with all of these nature shots. So i’m pleased with how close I snuck to this guy when I got this. I like the colour and framing - the red of the flower sets off the white and yellow of the bird. I’d like to remove that leaf in front of it though - maybe I can photoshop it out.

Closing thoughts

I think this month I really put into practice what I learned the previous month and I think the improved quality of the pics shows. Taking time to find a good frame, getting out and shooting more, getting experience with good exposure level for the conditions.

This month I realised that you can bump the ISO quite a bit before noise becomes a big issue - lightroom is actually really good at denoising.

I also hit a limitation of my camera. I would love to be able to set a minimum ISO/shutter while in AV mode instead of either full manual or full auto. This would help with ensuring a faster shutter in bright scences without having to manually adjust, while also still having the flexibility of auto.

So here is the end of the birdmainia. Next month there should be a lot more variety since there were less birds to photograph where I am now.