DSLR - How To Make Your Photos Stand Out.

[Indian]

That is a nice shot. Good composition.

Panning is something I have not seriously tried. I will have to pan for 'Birds in Flight' photography. I have to practice it - like pivoting the upper part of the body smoothly with the subject's direction of movement - till it becomes a natural movement.

I have trimmed your picture to remove the slight distraction on the left of the frame. I find that after trimming, the image has lost some of the depth in the picture.

View attachment 115061

Panning the shots of birds could be very tricky one and IMO the most difficult shot to take unless you have very good quality photography gear because everything is unpredictable here Also generally background is sky and you wont see much motion captured, so its important that you shoot the birds with some visual background here.

 

[Highway Ranger]

Hi all,

I am posting 3 pictures of Oriental Magpie Robin labeled Bird 1 and Bird 2.

If you were to choose one, which one will you choose. If you also say why you chose what you have chosen and why you have rejected the other it would be great.


Bird 1 - Personally for me, this was difficult to shoot as this bird was flying around and even when it perched on this tree I had to move a lot to get a clear shot through all the branches.





Bird 2 - This was a very easy shot. Saw the bird on the right and stopped the car. My wife handed me the camera and I just composed and shot some dozen or so shots through the open window. All of them were good to go. I didn't even switch off the ignition.

 

[Indian]

Hi all,

...
If you were to choose one, which one will you choose. If you also say why you chose what you have chosen and why you have rejected the other it would be great.
...

I like both the pictures actually nothing to reject
If I must to choose one, then I would choose Bird 1. This picture is not just about the bird, its also about its environment. Bird looks to be anxiously looking around, the branch on which it is resting puts lot of info. Only thing I did not like here was the stem on the foreground which is a bit of distraction, without that I would have become the best shot for me.

Bird 2 is also nicely exposed picture, but whole shot is centered towards the bird, other than that I can not visualize anything else. If the intend is to show the bird, then this is a fine picture. But it looks little 'bland' for my liking.

 

[Highway Ranger]

Thanks for taking the time to give honest feed back.

When I take a bird or animal picture, I get pictures with different expressions/pose. It is really hard for me to select any one expression as I like many of the expressions and feel I am not doing justice to the subject if I select just one. My friend tells me that I should only post one picture.

If I must to choose one, then I would choose Bird 1. This picture is not just about the bird, its also about its environment. Bird looks to be anxiously looking around, the branch on which it is resting puts lot of info. Only thing I did not like here was the stem on the foreground which is a bit of distraction, without that I would have become the best shot for me.

Bird 1, I feel is more dynamic. The bird was quite far and had to get at it through the branches. The image has already been cropped. I did see the vertical branch on the right, but did not want to crop it further, as I will loose the sharpness. The only reason I processed this image, was that the bird was sharp. If I had cropped it more, I could have got it like this. Still with a short branch distracting in the background...

Bird 2 is also nicely exposed picture, but whole shot is centered towards the bird, other than that I can not visualize anything else. If the intend is to show the bird, then this is a fine picture. But it looks little 'bland' for my liking.

Since the subject is the bird, I think this picture brings out the profile clearly and the bird looks very elegant. I also liked the angle of the branch and the bird. Simplicity works well for birds as it would if you take a portrait of a person. For birds, insects and wildlife it would be great to get them with creamy backgrounds.

Just my views. It is always nice to see the different views we have. Others point of view gives us more insights...

 

[MrRanger]

http://www.theautomotiveindia.com/f...557-your-best-photographs-159.html#post344936

( regarding above post)
Hello Indian,
1st thing is these pics are taken at different point of time with no intention to produce double exposure portrait,

Tips:
1: You need to be creative enough to imaging the outcome while taking double exposure shots.
2: if your camera supports double exposure then play with it,
3: if your camera has no support for double exposure then dont be panic you have loads of software to help you compose DEP.

In my case I have used 2 pictures, 1 is a flower stem and another one is my pic(preferably side faced to produce some good effects).
Sorry about the quality of the picture as I mentioned this pictures were not taken for this, I'll upload few examples this weekend. Thanks

 

[appus]

Oops. Where is my post. I think that did not get posted here :( . I voted for First bird. (in the post which is missing)
We always see birds with blurred background. This was something different. Could see lot of life in the first bird's photo. I even liked the stem in the background . Look at the eyes. Super.

2nd one also looks great. But, loved the first one.

(wrote a lot previously and do not remember what and all I wrote at that time)

 

[Highway Ranger]

Oops. Where is my post. I think that did not get posted here :( . I voted for First bird. (in the post which is missing)
We always see birds with blurred background. This was something different. Could see lot of life in the first bird's photo. I even liked the stem in the background . Look at the eyes. Super.

2nd one also looks great. But, loved the first one.

(wrote a lot previously and do not remember what and all I wrote at that time)

Thanks for your feedback. Both of you are taking in terms of photography. I am thinking in terms of that particular bird, the Oriental Magpie Robin.

If I had to delete one and keep just one, I would have chosen to keep the second one. I can see the full profile of the bird and it has pose. I maybe wrong in choosing that. But I would at least have an image that describes the bird well.

Eyes reflecting the sun brings life to a bird. I like the first one also as a good photograph.

 

[Highway Ranger]

Lifestyle... rural Kerala...Alleppy backwaters... daily commute...





Though it is no big deal, what caught my attention were the umbrellas.

C&C welcome...

 

[venkythaniks]

Lifestyle... rural Kerala...Alleppy backwaters... daily commute...

Good choice of having Monochrome for this pic.

 

[narik28]

Nice thread Highway ranger.

Like the tips you had posted here.

As i was strucked in office unable to add my snaps here.

Will try to post my contributions with my experiments asap.

 

[manojodungat]

Was behind this little fly for some time yesterday !
Fellow was adamant on not revealing his identity. Will try again, if time permits.

50mm prime on a couple of extension tubes
Aperture ring unlocked to enable manual control.

​

 

[Storme911]

Citilite

 

[Highway Ranger]

Normally when you shoot hand holding, you use both the hands to steady the camera/lens combo. I found that even with the correct technique and breathing, I was not completely eliminate camera shake.

I now use a different method to hold the camera and it works well for me. I thought I will share it here. (may not be of use for pros who use tripod for their shots. Me, I just stop shoot and move and shoot and so on. So never use tripod)

The idea here is to use your left elbow to cradle the lens, hold the camera with the right hand. Surprisingly you will find that the camera/lens is, sort of, rock solid in this position. Particularly useful for those using long focal length lens.

Feel free to try this out and ignore if you don't find it worthwhile. For me it works. I showed the technique to a couple of my photography friends and they were pretty impressed.

few images to show the technique.

 

[Highway Ranger]

While taking closeups like insects or flower, we tend to open up the lens to get creamy backgrounds. The downside is that the DoF is so thin that even most of the subject is blurred. While that might just work in some situation, it pays to have the whole subject covered by the DoF.

To do so, if one is very close, one will have to have close the aperture a bit.
For me, while shooting at a distance of around 2 meters with a focal length of 300mm, I need an aperture of atleast around f/11 to f/16 to get a decent DoF.


example of shallow DoF...




DoF deep enough to show the flower...

 

[gandhi]

I liked this thread. And glued to this thread. When you want to share some information, do not worry about the other's comments. You are sharing the information to the best of your knowledge, and the knowledge is always upgradable.

So keep this thread LIVE.