lonestranger

Caption this.

I didn't see that in the opening post when I first checked, guess I didn't scroll down to read the amendment separating this thread from the 'Lifers' thread. I apologize for my confusion.

My gutlesstimate is about 400 cranes, counted by approximate clusters of ten. I think that's a conservative 400 that could easily be closer to 500 for someone with better eyes.

The title of the topic is 'Photo Lifers', meaning photographic lifers so I don't understand your comment. If @Dan P's photos are of lifers, wouldn't they be appropriate right where they are?

Stopping to look behind you once in a while is good advice for both bird, and birder.

I thought my quoting him would have had the same effect, but I guess there's no harm in multiple notifications.

xpoetmarcr gets the win this time around.

Extreme crop of a bird too far away.

Last call for captions, I'll pick a winner tomorrow evening.

When shooting through a screen, @Nancy, you might have better luck with your focusing by getting your camera as close to the screen as possible. If you get close enough the camera shouldn't even detect it's there when focusing. The quality might not be any better, but it might prevent the camera from trying to focus on the screen.

Corn cobs and out houses, those were rough times. Hopefully you only know of the stories about them and don't have any first hand experience in measuring a corn cob's roughness.

Caption this.

What I would suggest, @dragon49, is putting your camera in Scene mode on the top dial and then bring up the Menu and scroll down and select the Bird Watching mode. That's the setting I use on my Nikon P900 and it's probably better suited for bird photography than the sports mode you're currently using.

I see photos of five Ruddy Turnstones and one House Sparrow.

I'm not sure how your camera is set up and you may have already done this but using a single, centered, focal point instead of multi focal points helps to ensure that you're autofocus isn't going lock on to something in the background/foreground. Perched birds usually need a single centered focal point but it helps to use multiple focal points for birds in flight. You may already know all that but it still might be helpful info for others having focus issues.

There's nothing on this sign that tells me where those guys with the funny looking sticks were getting all those fish.

As for rating photos, I think EVERYONE should rate photos on how good or bad they think the photo is based on the guidelines ebird has set. I do not think ANYONE should rate a photo based on how good or bad other people think the photo is. Over or under rating a photo based on it's current rating in order to manipulate that rating just doesn't sit well with me. I think a photo should be rated for the photo, not the rating, and the suggested guidelines should be applied the same to ALL photos.

Do you look at works of art with a magnifying glass? While I agree that sharpness is needed for a good image, pixel peeping is equivalent to using a magnifying glass to look at a painting that is usually viewed from feet away, not inches. Yeah it will show you if it's TACK SHARP, or tack sharp, or SHARP, or sharp, etc, etc, but it will also exaggerate the flaws making something that's not really visible, like subtle noise, look magnified to unacceptable levels. TACK SHARP focus is not needed to have a nice sharp photo, if it was I would have given up on photography years ago, maybe I should have. ? I too check the sharpness of MY photos when I sort them for editing but I don't go around zooming in on every photo I view to pixel peep other people's work, unless of course there's a big commotion on here about how a photo on ebird is under or over rated. ?

It might be easier to ask @Kevin to change the text to match the way the images are currently organized. If you typed out new text then all Kevin would have to do is cut and paste the text into place. Just trying to keep things simple but it may prove to be more complicated than that.

From what I have read in this thread, it feels like you expect too much from your reviewer...especially if you're expecting them to walk on water. ? The "Job" standards that you're expecting might just be a little different than the reviewer's standards for his or her "Hobby". Just saying.

I think you did just fine. The crop works for me, although other crops might work just as well if the bird was slightly higher in the frame. The colours look okay to me, although moving a few sliders this way or that way might give it a bit more punch. It might benefit from a little bit of sharpening but whatbird degrades image quality so don't expect your photos to look as good on here as they do in your photo editor. I used the word "might" because I am very much like you and don't really know what a photo needs just by looking at it. Yeah I can tell when a photo is over/under exposed or when the focus is off, but when it comes to making a photo look better, it's trial and error for me. I usually try the auto adjust feature first and see if it makes the photo better or worse and then play with the sliders a bit to see if the new adjustments look better or worse. While others may have a more rigid workflow and know what they are aiming for right from the start, my editing steps are usually based on trying this or that adjustment and seeing if I think it is better than it was. Quite often I don't notice a difference so I reset the slider back to zero and try a different slider. The only real way to know what, and how much, to edit a photo is to start editing and ask yourself if you like the results. Over time you'll get to know how the adjustments affect your photos, but you'll still need to play around with the sliders and decide if you like the results. Admittedly, it's not easy to make that decision at times but you'll eventually come to the conclusion that you can't improve the photo anymore, and that's when you save it or revert back to the original depending on your decision. Photo editing is subjective, some people may like or dislike your edits, they are not the ones you need to please though, please yourself with your photos and edit them, or not, to your liking. If you want to avoid some post editing, you may want to play around with your camera's built in picture settings and/or the contrast and saturation type adjustments. A one time adjustment or two in the camera can add some punch to your photos and save some editing time later. Just saying that the JPGs that the camera produces can be tweaked (edited) before the photo is actually taken.

Click on your name in the top right of the window. Click on Account Settings. Click on Signatures from the options on the left. Add/Edit your signature. Click save.

The more you know about your camera, the more you can do with it. As annoying as it is, reading, and re-reading the manual now and then isn't a bad idea. Manuals might be overwhelming when you first get your camera, but if read them again after using the camera for a while, a lot more stuff sinks in and makes sense.