Critique - Rocky Mountain Arsenal, September, 2022

Flying Snowy Egret

My best flying images of one of these guys, identified as a Snowy Egret in my bird app on my phone.

Dan at RMA

Our resident wildlife expert, scanning the sky...

Perched Snowy Egret #1

Probably my 2nd favorite of these next 3. Pretty far away.

Perched Snowy Egret #2

My least favorite, exposure is borderline blown out on the main body of the bird, also a bit far away.

Perched Snowy Egret #3

leaning towards this of the 3. I do like the one legged pose. Also close to too bright, but good facial detail. And was just a bit closer. Looks like the bird is looking for lunch on the ground or in the water somewhere.

Flying Barn Swallow #1

From a burst of 18! captured using electronic shutter at 20 fps. All heavily cropped. Amazingly many of these images were at least very close to focus. This one has the bird passing behind some grass stalks that are very out of focus, but still reduce the contrast on the downward tilted wing.

Flying Barn Swallow #2

Flying Barn Swallow #3

Love the bokeh in all of these as the bird flies in front of the background trees, and the camera maintains some decent focus.

Flying Barn Swallow #4

Maybe one of the better up-wing shots.

Flying Barn Swallow #5

getting a little closer I think.

Flying Barn Swallow #6

Coming back into the clear sky area

Flying Barn Swallow #7

Shows off some wing coloration and the forked tail.

Flying Barn Swallow #8

Back out against the blue sky.

Barn Swallow #8, No NR Applied

Not sure why the framing is slightly changed, but this is the RAW NOT preprocessed through DXO PureRaw, and then with no NR applied in Lightroom. All other edits should be the same as the previous version...Very clean for ISO 4000.

Bad Buffalo #1

This is representative of all of the shots I took on my side of the car. Overexposure and poor contrast required some editing but standout feature lack of critical focus anywhere in the frame. All shots taken in that direction basically sucked, regardless of any composition issues that might have also been present.

Good-ish Buffalo

Out of the car, shooting in the other direction. Or maybe not out of the car yet, shooting past Dan still in the car? Not a great shot, as all my iomages are too cluttered with no obvious subject. But this one at least comes close to decent focus. It is most definitely the exception

Bad Buffalo #2

Pretty sure I am out of the car now. This is vertically cropped to show how nothing is in focus anywhere in the shot, from near to almost infinity. Striking. Ok a theory emerges. I was shooting across the car hood, with the engine running, and the hood was almost too hot to touch. So maybe bad heat shimmer off the hood right in front of my lens?

bad Buffalo #3

A whole sequence of this little guy, all OOF...This is just one of many.