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Friday, June 22, 2018

Northern Mockingbird backgrounds

I'm continuing to present some of my better photos from earlier in the year.

This Northern Mockingbird was at Kit Carson Park in Escondido on March 7, 2018. It was perched on this dead yucca and catching the early morning light from the side, creating strong, but pleasant shadows.


My lens and camera combination required me to shoot at f/7.1, so the background isn't quite as smooth and uniform as I would have liked. That pale strip above the bird's head distracts somewhat from the artistic appeal of this photo. What to do?

In this case, all I had to do was drop to one knee to put the bird above the horizon! Now the background is a pleasant smooth, slightly cloudy blue sky.


Of course, this changes the bird from being pale in a dark background to be darker in a light background. But there are no distracting elements to compete with the bird composition. (Although I do notice if I tip my screen I can see almost 20 dust spots on my camera sensor--it's a "feature" of my push-pull lens "dust sucker.")

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