Certainly a different look for me California Towhee

[bajadreamer]

My wife has a couple of "tame" birds in our back yard that she feeds meal worms to. When the birds see her come through the door they will fly down and wait on the fence. We have a very small yard with an ugly plastic perimeter fence. Not a good background for pictures. What I did was to set up a rock on a table, place meal worms on the rock, and then place a back drop frame about 20' behind the table. I switched out different backgrounds. These were shot with a Canon R5, 100-500 mm lens at 400-500 mm, SS 1/200, f/6.3 ISO of 2000-3200 and fill flash at -2 FEC. Distance was about 20' from camera to subject.
I certainly would not want a bunch of these images in my portfolio, but I had fun setting them up and shooting them. I use these backdrops for multiple flash hummingbird photography.
All of these images look like "sky replacement" shots but they were not.
Any thoughts?

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[MorganP]

Its not something I would do but if it spins you fan then carry on. If you like it your the only one who matters.

 

[Charles Loy]

I call this a great effort, carry on! The better exposed photo is the last.

 

[Doug Herr]

I would use backdrops with more muted colors. Bright colors distract from the bird.

 

[Whiskeyman]

I would use backdrops with more muted colors. Bright colors distract from the bird.

I like your shots. And I agree with Doug Herr, and add that darker backdrops would work better for me. It seems to me that a lot of photo contest winners are differentiated by background, and that these backgrounds are most often darker.

BTW, if you had not described your technique, no one would have known how you got the shot.

 

[G Wright]

Interesting technique, not one I could use in the woods, but there are times when I wished I had something like that...and the bird would wait for me to set it up! I really like the third shot, one and two look just slightly washed out or bright to my eye. Maybe just a touch of texture on the feathers?