Birds

[oceanillusion42]

Just wanted some comments on exposure. New to shooting birds so still getting used to it, but since I live at the shore there seems to be a lot of opportunity. I was having trouble with exposing sea gulls... any advice on how not to blow highlights? Whenever I take pictures of seagulls in direct daylight the white feathers are way overexposed. I thought i did a decent job with exposure on the seagull shot below but I just wanted some opinions. Thanks.

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From Birds

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From Birds

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[isfppoet]

First of all, I think you did just fine on the seagull there with the lighting you had.

I'd like to point out that you don't need the [IMG] tags with the way you posted your images. The fact that they're showing up at all means they were unnecessary, for whatever reason.

Anyhow, back to photography, lol

I hate to be one of those people who depends on software to get a perfect photo, but sometimes because of the laws of physics/optics/circumstance you can't get it just perfect with the 1 or 2 tries that may be all you get.

In light of this fact, I recommend you intentionally underexpose just a wee bit, assuming your subject is in bright light as you stated. You risk losing a lot more information by overexposing a light-colored subject slightly than by underexposing it. Underexposure can be corrected pretty easily using basic photo editing software. Overexposure/blown highlights are harder to correct, in my experience. The same applies for super dark shadows, but generally there's more information than appears even in pretty dark parts of a photo.

Also, if you're close enough and you think it won't scare the bird off, you could try using a fill flash (even in decent light) to make sure the bird is evenly exposed rather than in stark shadows, unless you want shadows in the first place of course. This could also fill in shadows in the area around the subject that are otherwise too dark to expose properly while still having your subject correctly exposed.

Taking photos on a cloudy/overcast day can smooth out shadows on the birds you're trying to capture as well, making the photo easier to expose since the difference between highlights/shadows will be less.

Happy hunting! Hope this helped some.

[Visions]

Those are both good shots - I particularly like the two darker coloured birds. If you are shooting anything white in such strong light as is evident here you will have trouble with it 'blowing out' so get on the 'net and buy yourself an ND filter or two to play with. My Olympus has a tendency to over expose and this simple remedy has been the cure (I use full manual control over my settings). Alternatively you could chose a softly cloudy day to chase your gulls!
Your shots are nicely composed, the birds sit well in the images.