Grebe Nest and Lousy back grounds

I have been photographing the local grebes whose nest is now full of cute little babies! I like the grebes but they have rather poor taste in the asthetics of nest location. The background is a collection of bent, broken, dead and generally unphotogenic reeds and other plant material. It is impossible to find a camera position that does not have a read or leaf coming out of the grebes head. The stuff is close enough to the nest that they cannot be rendered sufficiently out of focus to blur them into non exsistence. But then what can I expect from an animal that builds its home from decaying plant matter!

 

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I hope that those of you who have been published or displayed at a show or competition would comment on how important a 'clean' background is when photographing animals in the wild. I use simple background sheets in my yard, but, wisely, they are not permitted in the local wetlands preserve. I do this for my own pleasure so I will probably have a print or two made despite the messy background. But I am curious as to the general standards for publishing, shows and competitions.

Get a bigger lens, shoot wide open & let the depth in millimetres help clean up the background for you. No problem is too big that it cannot be solved by throwing massive amounts of money and technology at it.(USGovt Policy)

The best way to learn the "general standards" for publication is to simply study lots of publications, concentrating on those you wish to have publish your photos.

 

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Same goes for shows and competitions.

 

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With babies like this, I think capturing a oh-too-cute moment is more important than trying to get the background just right.

Cluttered backgrounds detract from the impact of an image, there's

no doubt at all about that. Such backgrounds will lower the score

an image gets in competition (if that's what you care about, then

it's important I guess). It could lower the marketability of an image, depending on what its competing against. However, you get what you

get, and an image of grebes and chicks with a distracting background

is better than no image at all! As I've said before, if this were

easy, everyone would have prize winning images every time.

 

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There isn't a lot you can do except wait for the optimium light and

shoot with as wide an aperture as possible to throw the background

out of focus. That's not always possible if the background is close

to the bird. Longer lenses help too (so the bird fills the frame and you

see less of the background).

 

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Digital image manipulation is, of course, an option for those who

are willing to go that route

(but not one that many

competitions and some magazines are willing to accept - at least for now).

Personally, I think there is something to be said about placing wildlife within the context of their habitat. I mean it's not anyone's "fault" that grebes nest in decaying plant matter.

 

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I remember a wonderful exhibit by a photographer whose name I can't remember. His theme was poverty and most of the picures were portraits. The people were often dirty with unkept hair and tattered clothes. In the sharply focused background were broken windows, rusted out cars, dilapidated shacks, etc. Believe me, these pictures had impact! i'm sure the same photographer could have taken these people to a studio and taken great but different images.

 

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You can choose to isolate your subject (by throwing the background out of focus, etc.) or you can choose to place your subject in a specific context. Both methods can give great picures, depending on the message you're trying to convey.

 

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Bottom line, I think you're being to hard on yourself. I'm sure you have some great picures. At least better than my picures of nesting grebes - none!:-)

Thanks to all who offered advice and comments. I believe that this question arose because of comments made to me by my point-n-shoot friends. They think the grebe shots are great and that I ought to market them. I attribute this more to their own limited abilities rather than any great skill on my part. Nevertheless, I was fascinated by the fact that they did not see the cluttered background as being significant. They focused on the cute animals and their parents.

 

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I went back with some ISO 400 print film and reshot the grebe babies. This time they were swiming and thus I was able to shoot them away from the dead and dying plant life. I was also able to use a polarizer with some shots to cut down reflections from the water, plants and feathers. I suspect that saturated colors from the plant life will not be as distracting as the brighter reflections from the unpolarized plants. Hopefully, the prints will prove me right.

 

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My hat is off to those people who get great shots of wildlife using ISO 50 films like like Fudgie Velveeta. This is a real learning process. I can't remember when I had so much fun being frustrated!