I took this photo in crappy light (moan moan moan) yesterday afternoon. The original image is below, and was taken in landscape format. Normal sharpening applied, but no exposure compensation - this is the light as it was.

Despite the light, I felt it was still quite a nice photo, but what about those stupid branches? Here is my next attempt - some cropping to portrait format, and removal of the two branches that were poking out either side. Again normal sharpening, but no change in exposure.

An improvement, though I need to spend more time on the background. Some brightness might help (about +0.8), but the branches behind the bird are still a little distracting. Wouldn't it be nice to have it on a single stem? This latter one is pushing it, but might be possible. My general rule of thumb is that I will make changes only if I can be bothered, and only if the time spent is brief. This means I very rarely make any changes, and instead attempt to get the clean shot I am after whilst in the field by changing angles and so on. This isn't always possible of course, and often I'm just thankful to be able to get the bird in the frame at all! So I admit to thinking "digitally" at times, by doing things like making sure two twigs don't cross, knowing that it's then easier to get rid of just one of them in post-processing. There is the old argument about completely falsifying wildlife photography by use of digital techniques, but I'm in the camp that says a bit of tidying up isn't problematic, and that by erasing a twig here, or a blotch there, that isn't attempting to create a scene that didn't exist in nature. A step too far, in my opinion, would be erasing a Hummingbird feeder and putting a nice flower in its place - that's not what was there, it's made up. 

So how about this? I've done more than I would normally do on this one; the idea came to me that these extra steps might be useful for illustrating this post about digital manipulation. So very carefully I've gone around with the clone stamp tool (where you can copy one lot of pixels on top of another lot) and got rid of the thick branch to the left of the main stem which went behind the bird somewhere. Using the same tool, I've also got rid of the thinnest twig that intruded into the undertail, and attempted to recreate the plumage detail - all relatively straightforward so far. Then we come to the branches below the bird - how can that be done? To be honest I really struggled with this bit, and I think that it's easily apparent that all is not quite as it seems. But that's only because I know what was there before - would you have spotted it had I only posted this one image? After all, the bird is the subject, and that's what draws people's eyes, not a few centimetres of twig at the bottom of the frame, and photoshoppers can use this to their advantage. Always stay away from the bird's head and eyes, as that's where people look! So what do you think? Please use the comments box to share your opinions. For what it's worth, I actually like both images....

This popular escapee has been at large in my neck of the woods for what must be approaching four years. It has survived the harsh winters completely unscathed, and can most often be found a mere stone's throw from my house making a variety of very odd noises. It's a fruit-eater, and various people spoil it with grapes and nectarines, which perhaps explains it's longevity away from home. We don't know where it has come from, but the species' natural range is in Ethiopia, so to see it enjoying suburban London is always quite amusing. Today it was sat out in the open, as usual completely unphased by passers by. I tried a few shots with the 300mm at f2.8, which was very useful on yet another gloomy day - every time I use it I am blown away by quite how capable it is, God knows how good the new version is. I'm still getting used to the back-focus, but as long as I persist with it I'm sure I'll get there - hopefully before my Morocco trip in March - I'd hate to have one of the special Wheatears up close and personal and then completely mess it up. First two images using natural light, such as there was, ISO 1000 to 1600, and the final one with flash, ISO 320 at f7.1.

For a week or so now, a female Long-tailed Duck and a female Common Scoter have been present on the lake at Gunner's Park in Shoeburyness. I'd been hoping that they would stay until the weekend, as I'd heard you could get pretty close, which is extremely rare for these two species. Luckily for me they were both there, but decent light was utterly absent, and most of the time a very fine drizzle persisted. To even get shutter speeds approaching 1/250th I had to bump the ISO to 1600 and cross my fingers. Nine out of ten shots were a blurry mess, and even by lunchtime I had barely approached 1/500th. Action shots were of course completely out of the question, which was a real shame as there was a brilliantly close preening session followed by the customary flap. So a bit of a disappointment, but I guess beggars can't be choosers. An f4 lens would have been really quite handy, but the extra reach of the 800mm was also pretty handy; there is no such thing as a free lunch, though the high-ISO capabilities of the 1D Mark IV are perhaps approaching it - very single photo below is ISO 1250 and above. I used the full Wimberley and tripod today, I needed all the help I could get. I gather tomorrow is going to be equally dull, which makes a return visit completely pointless. I reckon I have between one and two days out of every fortnight where I can get some proper use out of my camera, so to have one of those days be as dark and dreary as today is most unfortunate. But you make the best of it - half of me knew it was futile, but the glass half-full half of me kept on pressing the shutter. Somewhere between 800 and 900 shots are currently sitting in my delete box - here is some of what is left. I know, moan moan moan - it's an integral part of being a photographer!

By the way, these are also my first photos for many years using "back focus" - where you use custom functions in the camera menu to separate the action of focussing and taking an image. So now I focus using a button on the back of the camera under my thumb (the * button on Canon), and the shutter is controlled by my index finger as usual. The theory is that you can effectively have single shot and AI Servo modes active at the same time, and you can improve composition. It takes a lot of getting used to, but so far so good - I've used it before so it's not completely unnatural to me.