@westona
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After not being on these forums for a couple years (too busy and forgot about it) I’m coming late. @abbygeorge In my limited experience, (and I’m sure this varies a lot) some cameras seem to struggle to focus or at least take longer when the battery is lower (not saying ‘low battery’, but at 1/4 or 1/3). My dad had a Nikon point-and-shoot that did that especially badly when in lower light or with a moving subject. Put in a fresh battery, and, presto, the AF works perfect in the same environment. I think my Canon 80D does the same thing, a little, with my 70-300 lens being slightly worse than my 18-135, I think. Anyway, just something you could experiment with sometime. Put in a half dead battery and try some low light, high ISO photos and see how the AF behaves. You don’t need a moving subject, just swing the camera at different objects and see how quick it will focus. Repeat with a fully charged battery and see if there is a difference.
@abbygeorge Good work! I think the editing/cropping that @jamesstaddon suggested looks like a full-page magazine add. I’m curious what became of the project and if you ever did additional editing or additional photos.
Good job on taking the opportunity you had. I agree that the geese don’t stand out very well, although I could not decide if it was because of the reflection or the lack of color contrast with the bank and water being dark shades similar to the geese.
Not having much time makes things harder, but moving a short distance left or right could have possibly removed the glare, although I don’t know what sort of distances and angles were in the equation.
I’m not sure how this would affect the overall appearance of the water in your situation, but another option could be a polarizing filter. That would likely have cut the white reflection, at least partially, if not completely. A polarizing filter can be a fun way to take pictures of things with windows since you can either let the window reflect, or look straight through it, just by adjusting the filter. With water, you can cut the reflection of the sky and look deeper into the water or let the color of the sky reflect.Nice shot! I agree with the other two about using thirds. Some Canon cameras (and smartphones) allow you to make the third lines show up as an overlay on your LCD screen or viewfinder (digital viewfinders), but I’m not sure about Nikon. Having the lines gives a great visual as well as a reminder when framing photos, at least to get a feel for doing it.
It can be helpful to shoot vertically instead of horizontally, since it allows space for the tail without including as much background. However, birds, especially small ones, tend to make quick moves making it difficult to shoot them. Vertical also opens some options for publishing such as magazine covers.
Attached is a bird photo I got some months ago.Attachments:
Well, you all have covered it fairly well already but I might add my two cents. A tip I heard from another photographer and have come to better understand from personal experience- it is hard to shoot a full moon and get good detail because it is that bright. Using an ND filter could probably help with that, but I prefer to shoot when it isn’t quite full. A day or two on either side doesn’t make a lot of difference in the size, but can make much more difference in the total reflected light making it easier to deal with less ambient light. I have attached a couple of my better moon shots for illustrations. All three were taken with a Canon SX60HS (point and shoot with 65x optical zoom, equivalent of more than 1350 mm lens according to the approximation marks on the lens barrel) None of these have been edited
The one with the red maple in the foreground was taken late one afternoon in the fall of 2016. F7.1, Focal length 97.73, ISO 100, shutter 1/100. This one way to to use landscape to accent the moon. (I should have gotten the moon into the top right thirds intersection)The “half” moon was in June of 2016, F8.0, Focal length 247.00 mm, ISO 100, shutter 1/60 This photo and the last one are more down the line of “get in close and let the moon speak for itself”. The last one should be sharper. The strong zoom does make it hard to get everything in focus. The depth of field is especially evident on the ‘half’ moon.
The nearly full moon is also from fall of 2016 F6.5, focal length 247.00 mm, ISO100, shutter 1/100
Attachments:
I like the second one better. There is too much plain black in the top of the first one. Possibly crop it down and touch up the purple and green lens flare in the middle just left of center.
The second has enough symmetry to “frame”the picture but enough diversity to keep it interesting. Once again, a little bit of cropping to remove the light that shows on either side just outside the support pillars, would give more of an “inside looking out” feeling to go with the “framed” feeling.
A Bible verse or saying could easily be put on the road at the bottom if you like doing that type of thing.@ian I like that last photo! I would encourage you to keep the rule of thirds in mind. In this case, framing a little farther right would have removed some of the left edge clutter as well as giving room for the golden rod to “bend towards the center”. It tends to make a picture more life like because the subject has somewhere to go. Not sure if that makes sense.
Also, things found along the third lines tend to have better visual appeal and tend to catch eye quicker than dead center things.
