Pittsford Reservoir

Hello everyone,

I'm been looking though the what everybody is posting and it's left me feeling a little intimidated. Some pretty incredible shots.

I went to Pittsford Reservoir in Northampton to try out the manual settings and RAW as well. I have a feeling I'm doing something wrong.

The first picture is of some Mallards.

FujiFilm s6500fd
1/125
f4.9
ISO 100
66.7mm

All comments welcome.

Payat

This is from the same day at Pittsford.

1/125
f5.6
ISO 100
6.2mm

Hi Payat,

Welcome . Some questions you need to ask yourself about your Mallard are. If you had moved to one side would it have been a clean shot rather than having the sapling out of focus in the foreground? Also could you have got down lower, nearer water level, to give a better point of view. Mallards are an easy to find bird and easy to coax with food, so use this to your advantage to get them into better positions for photography.

HTH

Regards

Rob

Hi Paytal

Never feel intimidated, always feel positive about learning & improving your skills behind the camera.

If you would like, you could join me as a guest on a days shooting with the birds I work with. I would be more than happy to try & point you in a direction that could be of help, the timing of this would have to be during the summer time.

Send me an email if you want to accept.

Vince

PS: Good comments from Rob

News Update: 2 weeks before we move into our New Centre, 1 week for our birds to settle in then back to normal

Hi Payat,

Please do not feel intimidated by the work of others on this website / UK forum but see it as an opportunity to meet great people and learn from eachother!

I think that in the case of mallards or waterbirds in general it is best to get down flat on your tummy on the waters-edge and get at the same level as the waterbirds, This will give you a more intimate point of view and will often give you much cleaner backgrounds wich in return will lay more emphasis on your subjects.

Hope to see more of your work in the future and keep trying hard and one day you will see that just by looking at the work of others over here you have learned an enormous amount of photography skills and....believe it or not...we have all started out that way...!

Greetings,

Jeroen Stel

If you are serious about improving your photography, you have come to the right place. Keep posting and in a year's time you won't be able to believe the difference that just seeing what some of these guys can do has made to your own pictures.
I too would start with a lower viewpoint.
Eric