Photography forum image of the month – June 2013

Hi Photo lovers!

Every month on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­bers nom­i­nate images that they like. Then at the end of the month I choose an excel­lent image and talk about why it rocks. The photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo con­tests. I just choose a photo that has extremely strong ele­ments that we can learn from.

Just so it’s clear, the photo I choose is not nec­es­sar­ily the best one of the month. I’ve come to real­ize it’s not really log­i­cal to pit images from totally dif­fer­ent gen­res against each other. That’s why there are cat­e­gories in photo contests. 

My goal is to sim­ply choose an excel­lent photo and talk about why I think it rocks. This month was another crazy hard month though as the nom­i­na­tions from dif­fer­ent gen­res were of very high quality.

This month’s choice is Fos­ter­ing by Mike Bons Fos­ter­ing.

Fos­ter­ing by Mike Bons

I chose this image for a few reasons:

1 — Focal point sharp­ness and deci­sive moment — Look at the sharp­ness on the eye of the baby bird, it’s just gor­geous. The tim­ing is equally gor­geous; the hummingbird’s beak is inside the chick’s mouth and we can see a hint of a bug. The hummingbird’s legs are won­der­fully frozen. Mike explains in his post that he used a ‘trig­ger­trap’ to trig­ger the shut­ter from yards away and I just love the use of this new tech­nol­ogy to help us make bet­ter images. I also applaud the ded­i­ca­tion to set­ting this all up and wait­ing patiently.

2– Com­po­si­tion — Fram­ing here is bang on as is the guid­ing of our eyes which go right to the chick. I really like the shape of the hummingbird’s blurred wings. I also like the leaves that are included at the oppo­site side of the frame and the free space around the hummingbird.

3 — Shut­ter speed — Won­der­ful choice of high shut­ter speed to get sharp­ness like that on the chick and the frozen hum­ming­bird legs. The motion-blurred hum­ming­bird wings add to this image big­time and are a tes­ta­ment to how fast that lit­tle bug­ger flaps its wings per second.

For all these rea­sons, this is my choice for image of the month. Since we all have opin­ions, some mem­bers may dis­agree with my choice. That’s cool but THIS thread is not the place for debate over my pick, NOR is it the place to fur­ther cri­tique the image. The pur­pose here is to sug­gest strong ele­ments in the photo that we may learn from.

Con­grats Mike Bons!