I guess its macaw day

[bekhiann]

First please don't mind my rambling, if i don't make sense ignore me, I have Graves Disease and am super Hyperthyroid right now and I get yappy, distracted, borderline if not already crazy. Trust me I have tried to edit this down and make sense this is the best i can do. Sorry in advance.

Would you crop out the pole? The pole itself is not distracting me but the line of poo is. I just feel like if I crop out the pole then I will lose the whole of the bird and any closer crop on the bird will make the other birds more distracting. Or am I focusing on it too much. Why did I only take one picture of the bird, i get distracted, and have two kids running ahead to a rope bridge over a manmade waterfall 40 feet away from me, I am lucky I even get to bring the camera let alone shoot anything.

Would some of you pros look at the EXIF data and tell me why I might have had to adjust the exposure to get it to pop more like this, they were a smidge washed out looking. My 7D is currently waaaay above my knowledge level but I hope with some classes to grow into it. (starting Saturday) Just having a lot of problems with the focus (even without autofocus, using single point, i think this cameras autofocus is notsosmart) and exposure when I try to go manual.
I do better in low light cause the camera goes up to such a high iso which is wierd i suppose but when i have this nice filtered light and i fight so hard to get the right focus and shutter spd and iso and aperture and not have my subject run away in the meantime. I would love to show the original but i was not shooting in RAW and (stupid) saved over it (don't ask why i wasn't shooting in raw, or why i still dont have the canon software on my laptop, - i told you, kind of crazy, but im loving learning this stuff and no way going back to a point and shoot)



Camera Canon EOS 7D
Exposure 0.01 sec (1/100)
Aperture f/4.5
Focal Length 60 mm
ISO Speed 320
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Photometric Interpretation RGB
Exposure Program Manual
Date and Time (Original) 2011:10:24 03:13:14
Date and Time (Digitized) 2011:10:24 03:13:14
Metering Mode Multi-segment
Exposure Mode Manual
White Balance Auto

[SolventSolution]

Nice Macaws! Nice color.

The pole does pull my eye away a bit from the birds but personally I don't think it takes too much away from the subject. I kind of think it provides a bit of framing.

The one thing that is distracting to me is the Macaw on the left with it's head cut off. I don't have photoshop yet so I won't be of much help with technique but I think you should be able to remove that bird from the image.

[crockny]

Do you have photoshop? Use the clone tool and clone out the poo and the macaw on the left ... could you have positioned yourself so the second bird's whole head can be seen? That would have made a better composition ...