Flying bird from sign

[Cathrine]

This sign had a bird sitting on the sign.. Every time I took a picture, it was either over expose or under expose,and when I got the exposure right- the dang bird flew away. I stood there and waited to try and the bird would fly away again. I would do it again and again. Finally, instead of getting a bird sitting on the sign, I just got one flying off the sign. Thought I'd share my frustrating experience! LOL

My question is--how can I make this picture pop? The condition of that day was a cloudy, depressing day--it was raining on and off.

Focus Length 50.mm
shutter speed 1/1250s
aperture f/1.80
iso 200
no flash used
expo bias 0.00 ev

Thank you!

[Ben Holder]

I like this photo a lot. I am having a hard time deciding what advice to give because there is nothing really wrong with the photo. If you shot in raw, I would work with the highlights and shadows a little bit (kind of a more manual contrast adjustment). Maybe try to make the clouds pop a little bit more, because the sky looks a little bit clipped. The bird and sign are well exposed though, so I guess it is better to have that than a black bird and nice sky.

Also, don't straighten the sign. Making it vertical would make it too symmetrical, and would look wrong. I would try cropping from the bottom right keeping the same aspect ratio (hold the shift key when your cropping) to move the sign over to the right a little bit.

[Yorkie]

I'm with Ben on this - there's nothing wrong with the picture. I'm not even sure that a bird sitting on the sign would have been better, unless it appeared to be reading about all the things it would not be allowed to do on the beach!

I also agree with Ben that you shouldn't straighten the wonky horizon because it's not that far off horizontal and straightening it would mean cropping off the one little bit of sand visible at the bottom that confirms the sign is on a beach.

And if the day was grey, the picture will never look sunny. Just enjoy it. If you print it at a decent size, I'm sure you'll get lots of appreciative comments on your skill catching the bird in flight. (Just don't tell anyone else you did it by accident!)

Cheers,

Yorkie
Yorkiepix - Welcome home

[Cathrine]

I thought the picture looked a little plain--thank you for telling me that it is a good picture after all.

As for cropping, I would've forgotten about the assymetrical rule... I have a bad habit of making things right smack in the middle and perfect. It is a bad habit to break! lol

Also, a little info about this picture--this beach is part of the region being affected by the gulf coast oil spill crisis. No form of oil has not shown up on this beach yet and hopefully will not.

Thanks!