Critique my first attempts at wildlife photography!

Hi foto fiends! My lovely husband maxthevool and I are poking about Sonoma county on a mini new year break, and I’m playing with my new toy, a Canon Rebel T4i. (I think I got that right). We had a couple of lucky breaks, and saw some great critters, and I think I got some nice shots.

Any critiques would be hugely appreciated. These are straight off the memory card, with just a little cropping. I am yet to dip my toe into the post-processing world. I’m also happy to post the original images if anyone’s interested. I’ve already heard from a more in-the-know friend that I ought to change my settings and shoot in RAW format - whoops. Who knew?

If you’re wondering, the photos include a northern harrier 1, pelicans, raven, mule deer, bald eagles, bobcat(!), harrier 2, willet and CA quail!

Learn the Rule of Thirds and get MUCH closer to your subjects.

The bobcat is by far the most interesting photo.

Be careful when shooting shots with horizons to keep the horizon level; note in your second photo that the ocean water is about to run off the page. This can be corrected in Photoshop.

The deer photo has some nice contrast, but the subject is not doing anything interesting, which is a common problem with wildlife photos. If the animal isn’t rare, or isn’t in some sort of action scene, it doesn’t generate a lot of excitement. This famous photo, for instance, is very dramatic.

The shore bird photo has some good movement with both the bird and the water. Again, shots of animals are very common (not as bad a flowers), so try for something unique, if at all possible.

Try cropping some of your images to achieve a more dynamic look. Centered subjects don’t often work all that well, as chacoguy indicated with the rule of thirds link. Also, try imagining what you’re seeing as a black and white image. If an image would work in B&W, it will probably work in color.

Buy a longer lens or get closer to your subjects. Take a LOT of shots, select the best few and discard the rest.

None of this is meant to be harsh, by the way. Keep shooting!

I like the bird in the surf. Crop a bit of sand to follow the rule of thirds and it will be lovely.

Don’t get closer to the bobcat. Those kitties are mean!

I’ll second the Rule of Thirds recommendation. It really can improve your composition. The photo of the bird on the beach, for example, would look better if the bird was a little lower and a little to the right, so that there’s more space in front of and above him.

But–as the article chacoguy linked to states–it’s not a hard-and-fast rule. Your picture of the deer breaks the rule in a good way. With the symmetry of the face-on shot as well as the framing of the foliage around her, it’s pleasing to have her centered in the picture.

I like your pictures–looks like you had a cool vacation!

For the first time out, those are pretty good looking shots.

In addition to what the others have mentioned, pay attention to your light and the time of day you are shooting. A lot of the lighting here is pretty flat and uninteresting. (And a lot of these pictures need a bit of a contrast punch, too) If you don’t have the animals doing anything interesting, you’re going to have to make up for it by having dramatic lighting (about up to an hour after sunrise, and about an hour and less from sunset.) I’m not a wildlife photographer, but the general concepts that make a great photograph still hold true in wildlife photography: Moment, light, composition, technique (not really in any order.)

You could Andy Warhol-ize them. Like this cow. (A cow is wildlife, right?)

chefguy, linkie no workie.

Your composition and your focus needs work. For example, in this photo http://postimage.org/image/fe0b5bw6r/ the bird is too centred and it’s blurry.

What type of lens are you using? Usually, wildlife photography uses telephoto zoom lenses. It’s possible to use others, but it’s easier to use those.

The lens I was using was a Canon EF-S 55-250mm f/4.0-5.6 IS II. (I cut and paste that from my amazon order, since I don’t know the important bits…)

Thanks, everyone, for the great feedback. I will recrop what I can following the Rule of Thirds, but I’m not always great at following rules :slight_smile:

It’s okay. The “rule of thirds” is one of the first rules you break. But it’s a good compositional guideline when you don’t know what else to do.

That bird picture does look slightly front-focused, but it’s hard to tell, given the flat lighting and small size of the file. The biggest problem with that is not the composition. Even perfectly composed, it would not be an interesting photo, as the light is very flat and not giving the subject color and contrast to make it look more three dimensional.

Those are some very nice shots, with great subjects! I agree with everyone else here; the rule of thirds goes a long, long way to making good shots into great ones. The shot of the bobcat - that’s really special! You never see those guys.

Did you tip your hat to the raven to show proper respect? :slight_smile:

Recropped a few images, and straightened the horizon in the pelican shot (thanks, Chefguy!) Better?

The bobcat one is much better - the kitty was getting lost in the picture before.

(Where the heck did you find bald eagles in Sonoma county?)

Off the top of my head, and I’m just an amateur myself: I think your pics are a great start. I can see you’re thinking about composition, which is great, and is the hardest part to do well. Go google up a bunch of cites on photo composition immediately, think about what you read, then go break all those rules once you’ve mastered each one.

I think you need to get a better lens for this sort of work, but you can work up to that; photography is one of those hobbies where you can spend as much as you want, (almost) no matter how much you have.

It looks like you were working in overcast conditions, which lessens the usefulness of the next item: take outdoor photographs at the beginning and end of the day where possible. Pics taken in the middle of the day offer flat light and no interesting contrast. Photographers call the first and last hour or two of light the Golden Hour(s) for a reason. Light when the sun is low can be magical, and your camera takes notice. But: you also have less light overall, and an f 4.0-5.6 lens won’t do as well, which is one of the reasons to have a better lens eventually. Also get a decent tripod for the same reason.

Re the bird shot: it looks like some sticks in the foreground were in focus rather than the bird. Go read your camera manual for stuff about manual focus, focus points, and focus modes (specifically “AI Servo”) to do better. ETA: the bobcat shot has the same issue, the foreground is in focus, the bobcat is not. I like that shot, but the focus is a big issue.

And, yeah: go fix the horizon on that water shot. Never not do this, it’s trivial to fix. You can use tilted photos artistically, but make sure that’s why you’re doing it.

It’s better, but the focus is off. It’s significantly front focused. Nice moment, but not quite there.

…a couple of things from me:

It looks like you are using a slow shutter speed, in some cases very slow. Do you know what shutter speed, etc, you were using in each of the shots? Do you understand what shutter speed, ISO and aperture are, and how they work on your camera?

And the second: if you can try and work with the auto-focus points turned off, and see if you can use a single-focus point instead. For the Bobcat photo for example: it looks like the camera chose to focus on the grass in front of the Bobcat: using a single focus point will mean you have more control over what is in focus and what isn’t in your photo. If you need elaboration sing out! Nice start!

You need to start using fill flash. In photos like the bird, the subject is in shadow, in front of a bright background. Sometimes you can fix this in Photoshop, but it’s better if the problem is corrected when you shoot.

In addition, dawn and dusk are the most active time for a lot of animals. You’ll have better lighting and more active, interesting, abundant animals.

…disagree. I think the OP should get used to the basics of exposure first before moving onto adding flash. And I say that as a photographer who uses flash more often than not.