This was taken at a pond right by my house and it's become one of my favorite locations for photographing wildlife. There's currently a group of Northern Rough-winged Swallows using a downed tree over the water to perch and feed their young, so I spent an hour or two the other day crouched along the bank to get this shot. This photo shows one of the swallows feeding a dragonfly it caught over the water to its offspring. Taken on an OM System OM-1 and 100-400mm f5.0-6.3 at 400mm (800mm ff equivalent), f6.3, 1/3200, ISO 2500.
Contest Submissions
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4 Comments
To qualify my rating: I'm a begginer to intermediate hobbyest photographer. When your photo appeared, I said, "wow," out loud. Looking at your photo, I'm not sure what more you could do here. I'd love to hear from a more experienced photographer why this isn't four or five stars. But, even if I do hear an explanation, my five star rating stands. I love the lighting, and I love that the wing is backlit. Just wonderful.
Thanks so much Daniel, I really appreciate your kind words! I would also consider myself to be a beginner (I got into photography last fall), but I'll try to give a somewhat unbiased answer based on my limited experience. Something I've noticed in this contest and the previous one is that some people will go through and give 1's to objectively at least solid images (based on the Fstoppers rating criteria). I imagine these are either people who just don't like the genre or want to boost their own images in the ratings. One of my other images in this contest (the bighorn sheep one) has received multiple 1's and 2's. Although I really like it and feel it should be a 3, I can see that people may disagree with the way I framed the photo. There's probably an argument that the image is unbalanced, but I wanted to create empty space for the sheep to look into with the snow blowing in. I think it creates a bit of atmosphere. As for this photo, I know there are some 2 star ratings. People may disagree with the way I centered the birds (ie. ignored the rule of thirds) or that the shot isn't tighter etc. Whatever the case may be, you can't please everyone but I'm always happy to receive constructive feedback to become a better photographer.
I am not a beginner to photography, nor I am an expert or professional. I'm giving this one a 2 because I think it would benefit greatly from some cropping - particularly to remove much of the branch. It is just dead space that draws my eye away from the birds. I would also have placed the birds on the top or bottom of the right vertical rule of thirds line with the birds larger. I would also try to tone down the background some as it is also distracting. I think this image has a lot of potential but needs a little work. I don't usually explain my ratings unless the poster seems open to some constructive criticism. But I also agree, some people like to rate very nice pictures with an unjustified low score.
Thanks for the feedback! Yeah that's a totally fair critique and I also like it with a tighter crop. I might repost this with said crop before the deadline. I usually do frame my images with the rule of thirds in mind but for some images, like this one, there's really nothing else in the image to balance the subjects if they're off-center.