When trying to determine which of my finished photographs are of the best quality, I must take into account the quality of the original photograph and the degree of editing I chose to apply to it. As amateurish as my photographic skills and equipment are, my editing skills and competence with available tools rate at an even lesser degree. In constant arguments with myself, I have many times—against my own better judgment—chosen to over saturate to a point of cartoonish color or over sharpen to the point of eye-searing sheen.
Truth be told, a lot of the photographs that I take cannot be saved, or even edited to apresentable degree. Such, however, was not nearly the case with my top five quality photographs of the day; and here they are, starting with my number one.
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Upon seeing my uploads from camera to computer, the photograph of the above pictured Northern Mocking looked far superior in quality than any of the others. I sharpened and brightened it a wee bit, and that was it. The other four required a bit more work.
Now, I present twelve runners up, in time line order.
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| Northern Mockingbird (11:22AM) |
As stated earlier, I did come across something special on this day. The two photographs immediately below, and the photographs from my previous blog post Love Birds depict that something special.
The photograph immediately below has not been edited at all: one in a million. I tried to sharpen it, but, in doing so, lost the sharpness, the clarity of the eye: one of the two valuable features of this photograph. Thus, you are looking at one of the only unedited photographs I will ever put up in permanent public display. Click on the caption link or the picture and you will somewhat see the female's eye I so wanted to preserve. Better still, click here and find it in the slide show option.
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| Black Vulture (11:33AM) |
The photograph below has been heavily edited, but in my opinion, it turned out nicely.
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| Black Vulture (11:39AM) |
I have plenty more photographs of this event, of the pair, and I hope to someday find the time and an excuse to display them on The Bird's Nest.
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| Eastern Wood-pewee (11:53AM) |
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| Great Blue Heron (01:02PM) |
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| Great Blue Heron (01:20PM) |
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| Mallard Duck (01:28PM) |
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| Mallard Duck (01:31PM) |
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| Mallard Duck (01:31PM) |
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| Wood Duck (01:35PM) |
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| Wood Duck (01:35PM) |
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| Wood Duck (01:36) |
All in all, I would like to thank the Mallards, the Wood Ducks, the Great Blue Heron that I chased around for over thirty minutes—with both my Canon and Nikon—and especially the pair of Black Vultures who also kept me captivated for over thirty minutes, and put on quite a show.
Take a bow.
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