Song Sparrow - Singing

I like this shot because it manages to isolate the subject by a combination of focus and luminance. I have spent some time looking at it in the larger version also.

Sometimes the norms in nature photography would tend toward simplicity. But that is not our everyday experience of things and events. We rather, our perceptual systems and minds,tend to discriminate; to separate and isolate. Very often we might see a bird like this in amongst what, from a purely photographic perspective, might be considered "distracting" elements. Yet as nature photographers, how can we reject the truth of the situation; this is very frequently how one finds things. Why not try to see how to make that the best picture it can be?

And that is what I think you have managed to do here. I often look out our kitchen window into a thicket of wild grape fines and I see sparrows sitting in there. And what you have captured here is a good representation of what I note in my own perception and cognition when I "parse" them out from amongst their surroundings; it's a matter of focus, form, and, in this case, luminance within the immediate foreground and signifcant bokeh in the more distant background.

Nice study in perception / attention / cognition.

I wonder why you had to use ISO 1600? While you did a good job IMHO of getting the bird in focus with all of the branches around it, I feel the bird is too bright, even over exposed and needs to be darker. Also, you could crop off some of the branches in front of the bird. Welcome to NPN. Thanks for sharing.

John Clulow - thank you so much for your analysis. It is largely what I feel about this shot. The bird was significantly obscured by the vines, but he was not going to come to me and be more open, so I had to go to him and make the best of it. He was positioned so that his chest caught the sunlight so I could isolate him from his background, but the immediate foreground vines were unavoidable - All I could do was work around them as best I could.

John Tobias, Thank you also for your critique. you are correct that my ISO was set high and could have been offset by reducing my shutter speed which was also probably too high in hindsight. my goal was to get a good crisp shot of the bird, which I think I almost achieved, but, I understand that had I reduced my shutter to 1/1000 and my ISO to 200 or so - I could perhaps have a clearer image. Such is the journey of learning photography, and I'm delighted that I'm on the path to understanding these adjustments that could one day produce excellence.

Thank you both for your honest assessments!!
Best
Iain

John Tobias, My feeling about the crop of the branches is that the photograph as shown is 100% of the image and could perhaps benefit from being cropped. However, I wanted the bird to have some space in front of him to be singing into in the composition. It's a balance between reducing the branches in front of him and giving him space to breath.

Thanks again!
Iain