How about this Jackdaw?

[Wendy85]

Hi all,

I've been checking out this forum for quite a while now, and just thought it's time to post one of my own. I will be showing my photo's for the first time to some teachers at the Dutch Photo Academy where hopefully I will start studying this fall. (I've been working a pretty dull office job for the last 4 years and have decided to follow my heart and start doing what I love) Maybe this is a nice place to check out what someone else rather than my friends and family have to say about them

About the photo, it took me about 30 minutes of trying to sneak up on one of the birds close enough before I could get the shot that I wanted.

Cheers,
Wendy

[arctos]

I like the picture. It's pretty interesting and the bird does stand out well against the much lighter background, drawing attention to it naturally. You also got fairly good timing (mid-walk) and the slight tilt of the head gives the picture an almost mischievous feel.
Good framing as well, highly suitable for a banner for example.

However if the focus is on the bird (as a birding shot for example) then I'm not sure b&w conversion is a wise choice as there's not much tonality to the bird - it's just a mess of black and some darker gray.

Overall still a picture that I like.

[FlyingKiwiGirl]

I'm no expert so I can't offer you anything other than to say your capture made me smile and if it can do that then it must be most of the way there. Good luck following your heart, we only have one life. You go for it.

[larlyboi]

Hi.

Not much of a critique, but it's a cracking shot. The B&W seems a little harsh to my eyes, but I'm new to this so take what I say with a pinch of salt.

Andy.

[Wendy85]

Hi guys, thanks for your feedback I'm a huge fan of B&W photography and I still need to find my way into not shooting everything like that

I got accepted, so I will be attending school for the first time in 8 years this fall

[Ladyblackswan]

I have to agree with the "made me smile" comment I loved that the composition was so wonderfully asymmetrical and you can just see how surprised that bird was! I would be interested in seeing the photo in color vs black and white!

[Krusty79]

Congratulations on your acceptance! I like your shot a lot. Great capture of the expression on its face. It reminds me of when a dog is confused and tilts his head. I think the B&W helps to make the subject stand out.

[ryder]

Did you shoot this in RAW or JPG or both????

The reason I ask is that while I like the shot, too much of the bird is in solidly blocked up shadow. There are tools out there for shadow recovery but the best answer is to work with the RAW file. I use Canon's DPP software which lets me go plus/minus with both highlights and shadows to get most of the way there. Then I work on the output JPG with Gimp and I have some plug-ins from FX Foundry that allow for shadow recovery and/or tone mapping the image. I suspect that if I had taken this shot, I could get some detail out of at least 80% of the shadows in this image. Almost all photo software has some sort of dodge/burn tool that should allow some recovery of the shadows by dodging. Good luck and keep after it, Mark.

[ryder]

I did save the JPG posted here and opened it in Gimp to see what could be done and I ran the tone mapping on it which helped some and then did a shadow recovery and that did the trick. You can see all of the feather details on the whole bird yet you still have shadows and light areas. This reduced the shadows by about 60% to let the details out. So the information is not lost in the JPG compression at all. Just thought you might like to know, mark.