Townsend's Warbler

I haven't posted any photos in a while on this critique forum. Still,

I have been taking lots and losts of photos, mainly of birds. Here is

one I am quite proud of, since it's so difficult to get one of these

little guys to sit still even for one second. Anyway, it was taken

with my fairly new and much loved Sony Alpha a100. Please tell me what

you think. I cropped the photo which hopefully led to a more

interesting play on what direction the bird it is going, and I've

found that I like to include alot of the surroundings in which the

birds are photographed, rather than a taxonomic up close shot which we

have millions of.

 

Thank you in advance for your thoughts, and your constructive advice.

Nice capture. My artistic preference would have been to do a portrait mode on this photo. You, of course have the final word on the photo you want to capture. Congrats.

At first I though the photo was a bit 'busy' but the more I look at it, the more I like it. I like the top-down view of the bird, something I don't see too often and the twist on the head and nice diagonal line of it's outline makes it stand out.

 

*Disclaimer, I'm a rank amateur and this comment may have no value whatsoever!

Thanks Tony, I know portrait mode would have probably yielded a nicer blur in the background, however this little guy caught me by surprise so I just went with the mode I had, the programmable auto mode, "P" on my Alpha.

 

You got it exactly right Andy, I'm an amateur also but I'm venturing into new territory for myself trying to get bird photos that aren't taxonomic in nature. I cropped to create a top to bottom flow just as you pointed out! After all, these aren't photos for identification, they're for "artistic" purposes.

 

Thanks for your comments, I really appreciate them both.