Two of my favorites are bird photos. I probably don't have a long enough lens for a lot of great bird shots (I max out at 300mm) nor do I have the time/patience/inclination to sit quietly, waiting for birds to come to me. I shoot near my house, I shoot at feeders at state park nature centers and, once in a while, I shoot in some sort of aviary.
I take a lot of bad pictures of birds. They're not quite sharp for any number of reasons or they're poorly lit or, perhaps most commonly, the background/environment is drab or distracting. It doesn't help that my backyard is most often host to house sparrows and grackles and the like. And would it kill Mr. Bird to do something more interesting than just sit there? In an appropriate area of my frame, of course.
With all that said, here are two bird pictures that I happen to like.
This picture almost didn't make the cut because it's just a cardinal. Cardinals are pretty common in our neck of the woods. But they're still neat to look at and this one just happened to strike a pose looking into the sunlight while sitting in a flowering tree with a nice blue sky in the deep background. So it's a favorite just because it's pretty.
I took this maybe thirty or forty feet away from where I'm sitting as I type. It's a pear tree growing less than ten feet from the faded green-gray paint of the rental house next door. There aren't too many angles that give one a sky in the background and the tree flowers for only a short while each year. I'm happy that the right circumstances came together for this shot.
I took this in an aviary at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park. Usually in these situations, I take a picture of nearby signage so I can show off how smart I am by casually identifying the birds. I didn't do that this time and my subsequent Googling has also let me down.
Whoever they are, these guys were kind enough to interact with each other in front of my camera and look good doing it. I'm in their debt.
