will139
Active member
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Mourning Dove Tamron 150-600mm G2, f8, @600mm, 1/320, ISO400
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Nicely composed image, great sharpness on the eye and the exposure looks good. You might try a bit of highlight recovery to get more detail into the bright areas.
The biggest issue with the photo is the busy background which in addition to having a lot of distracting detail, is also fairly bright and with similar colors as the dove which limits the bird's ability to pop. There also seems to be at least one and perhaps a couple of out of focus foreground grasses that distract from the main subject, one to the left that appears to run in front of the perch and one that appears to run right up the dove's back. That second one might actually be behind the perch, it's hard to say from this image but it's a bit of a distraction as it runs right into the bird's tail.
The background issue you might be able to improve a bit in post with some selective blurring and some burning down if you're careful but ideally you'd shoot your G2 wide open at f/6.3 for a bit more subject isolation and of course if you can get closer or find subjects where the background is more distant that can help a ton.
The sharpness looks good to me and I don't know what camera you're using but in most modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras you can go well beyond ISO 400 without excessive noise concerns so don't be afraid to speed up that shutter for a bit more camera shake and subject movement insurance when the light is good. That point took me a while to embrace as I came from film days (Velvia at ISO 50) and then first and second generation Nikon DSLRs where you really wanted to keep a lid on ISO which often meant slower shutter speeds even in great light. But things have changed.
The biggest issue with the photo is the busy background which in addition to having a lot of distracting detail, is also fairly bright and with similar colors as the dove which limits the bird's ability to pop. There also seems to be at least one and perhaps a couple of out of focus foreground grasses that distract from the main subject, one to the left that appears to run in front of the perch and one that appears to run right up the dove's back. That second one might actually be behind the perch, it's hard to say from this image but it's a bit of a distraction as it runs right into the bird's tail.
The background issue you might be able to improve a bit in post with some selective blurring and some burning down if you're careful but ideally you'd shoot your G2 wide open at f/6.3 for a bit more subject isolation and of course if you can get closer or find subjects where the background is more distant that can help a ton.
The sharpness looks good to me and I don't know what camera you're using but in most modern DSLRs and mirrorless cameras you can go well beyond ISO 400 without excessive noise concerns so don't be afraid to speed up that shutter for a bit more camera shake and subject movement insurance when the light is good. That point took me a while to embrace as I came from film days (Velvia at ISO 50) and then first and second generation Nikon DSLRs where you really wanted to keep a lid on ISO which often meant slower shutter speeds even in great light. But things have changed.
will139
Active member
Thanks for the tips and I'll work on those. FYI I used a Canon 90. The original that I have is a little darker than this and I think it looks a little better. I have noticed that a couple of photos I posted here seemed to have lightened from what I have at home.
Often that's the difference between viewing an image in a color managed program like Photoshop or Lightroom vs viewing through web browsers that don't apply color management. But it also pays to make sure you post any web images in sRGB color space, not Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB which can be great for print processing but result in big image shifts when you view the same photos in applications like web browsers that don't color manage or correctly interpret those color spaces.
Of course you can do all of that and when you view the same image on someone else's monitor it can look very different as monitors vary tremendously in how they reproduce colors and most folks that aren't photographrers don't color calibrate their monitors. Nothing you can do about that part but just post images well managed to your eyes, make sure they're in the sRGB color space before posting and accept that it can look different on different monitors.
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I always find my own pictures from low ground and the bird sitting with its back to me a bit dull. And I would say it is a case with this dove too.