Birdies at malahide

georgey

Took these last monday at malahide estuary:)

RichyX

They're both very nice pictures.
I'm not sure about the crop of the robin pic, he's a too bit central for me.
Personally I'd crop out most of the branches and have the robin to the left of the image.


There's a beautiful other worldly glow to the edges of the swans wings.

What equipment were you using?

Xios

I'm loving those swans, but the robin is too centered, try expanding to left side if you can to give the robin more too look at.

CONMIKE12

Yes,i too really like that swan shot.Very nice.

Calina

If I may voice a little dissent...

I prefer the picture of the robin. However, I've done a little work on it - I hope you don't mind

What I did was crop it to a square and centred the robin. Then I (quickly) created two layers out of it, one to convert to black and white, and one to leave in colour. When I saw this photo, it was screaming out for selective colour treatment because of the robin. For the black and white conversion, I upped the contrast quite a lot and then did the conversion.

The upper layer is the robin. I basically got rid of everything (almost everything anyway) around the robin, and then placed that layer on top. While I was at it, I applied a translucent white frame to the picture (I think the transparency on it is around 41%.

I used Photoshop Elements 5.0 to do all this.

___________

I hope you don't mind.

Regarding the swans, I don't like the picture for a couple of reasons. I'll admit that photographing wildlife of any description is tough, and hard, and swans are hardly cooperative, particularly if they are flying. The lighting isn't all the great, I have to sayThe left most swan isn't really all that sharp and takes from the picture in my opinion, particularly as the right swan is stunning. I would crop that one and get rid of the second swan. Probably crop to a square again. Alternatively, if you really did want to keep the second swan, I'd crop it (admittedly to a non-standard size) top and bottom and aim for a slightly bigger length:height aspect ratio.

But that is just my opinion and I am aware that there are a few fans of the swans out there.

Borderfox

Very nice. Love the original Robin...

Ruu_Old

Lovely work, big fan of birdeh pictures.

georgey

Thanks all, Richyx I used a 1dMKII+50-500 sigma(Bigma) at 500mm and I think f8 for both, Calina I really like your conversion maybe not for me with this photo but I will certainly try it on future shots thanks.
Philip