As you recall, we were with our good friends the Mannings while visiting Holland, MI and six Least Sandpipers were bathing in Lake Michigan. Below are three shots I took and asked you to choose the best. Unsurprisingly (because there rarely is in these exercises) there wasn’t consensus on just one of the shots. This reminds us that each person sees our photographs through different eyes.
Beneath each version I shared what you thought about it and how many preferred it.
Version 1
Less than 20% of the respondents liked Version 1 the best. Docshaf said that it “captured the action the best” and liked the sharpness of the head and the wing line. GMoses liked this one because it captured an “awkward and unusual” moment, drawing the viewers’ eyes to it.
Version 2
About 40% of the respondents liked Version 2 the most. Birder2011 liked “the angle of the bird”. Ron Ziegler thought this one was “more dynamic” and liked the angle of its head. He also noted that none of the photographs had a Catchlight in the eyes (the bright twinkle of the sun). I would have had to move to my right to get that (note the side of the bird facing the camera in all three versions are in shadow; being on the other side of the bird would have been in sunlight, increasing the chance of getting that Catchlight. Paul D liked liked the motion shown along the top of the wing.
Version 3
50% of the responses favored Version 3. Kathleen B. said she liked the “grace” of the bird. Others said they just preferred this one over the other two. Bajadreamer felt like there was no “space” for the bird – it had no where to go. To demonstrate his point he loaded this version into Photoshop and added space on the top, right, and bottom of the frame. He also lightened the head and face. Here’s his revision of Version 3:
Can you see the differences? It does give the bird more space to “land” even though we can’t see the beach. Thanks Bajadreamer for taking the time to illustrate your point using my photograph!
I went back to my originals to see if any of the three versions could be cropped to include the shore and found that only Version 1 could (in the other two the birds were too close to the bottom of the frame to do so, meaning I was too slow in panning the camera downward). Here’s a revised Version 1.
Although this revised Version 1 photograph shows the shoreline, the bird is smaller as a result. Did it improve the shot or not?
After publishing several of these “Which One Wednesday” posts it reinforces how viewers look for different things in bird photographs. Everyone seems to agree that sharpness/focus is important. Catchlight is important. The action depicted is also important, although there’s no one way to judge what action grabs the attention of the most viewers. The wing position in BIF shots convey different levels of action – look again at the three versions above and ask yourself which wing angle is the most energetic (more on that in a future post).
I would be surprised if everyone agreed on the same version in a future “Which One Wednesday” but I’m going to keep publishing them: I find the comments more interesting than the voting.
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