Saturday 19 July 2014

Birds on Posts

There is an old wildlife photography adage, which is that birds on posts are far better than birds on natural features. Add a bit of barbed wire, even better. So, especially for non-believers, who miss out on opportunity after opportunity because the perch isn't the millimetre-perfect moss-covered knoll, here are a few birds on posts. These are mostly all from my recent trip to Iceland, a country with a great many excellent posts, some of them brand new!

Plain, dark, nice

This photo needs more post

A plain post AND a ring. Double the quality.
More post than bird. Brilliant
  
Excellent straight edges and man-made angles

Mega post, completely dominates. Bird added for scale.

A bit too natural for my liking...

I might come back to this and clone out that nasty moss

Superb! Clean, lovely background, slightly rusty barbed wire. The bird spoils it.

You're not going to see much better than this


Not a fan of all that lichen....

A simply stonking post!

Post of the trip

Needed to bring up the exposure on the post as the shaded area lacks detail

 A bit of moss is starting. This post will be no good in about six months time - ruined by nature,


2 comments:

  1. The lichen post, the one ruined by the Godwit on top is my fave. Maybe the lichen is feasting on the Godwit crap.

    As for the barbed wire shot, is that American barbed wire or European barbed wire. As Iceland is halfway it could have come from either.

    Very, nice shots. Nice isolation. What f stop do you typically use?

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  2. It depends on how close I am to the post, and how big the post is. I'm a big fan of shooting posts wide open if I can, not only for the extra speed, but also why spend all the cash and carry all the weight of an f4 lens if you are going to stop down to f10 all the time. That said, if there is sufficient background separation, and the post has extra detail that needs capturing, I do drop to f8 on occasion. All my shots are between min, which is either f4or f5.6 depending on lens or use of converter, and f8, with a handful higher, typically of posts in flight.

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