Down in the mud.

[Martin Brazil]

This weekend I managed to get out to a bit of swamp land and put into practice all the things I have been learning here. I have been getting right down in to the mud as Cannon Bob suggests, attempting to get the subject to look in my direction and trying to place the subjects on a neutral background. I have experimented with just a little pp on the raw files that I now save my shots in and I also took on board Frogs advice about time of day and packed up at around 9.30am when the sun became too strong. Any comments greatly appreciated.

[scott-devon]

Beautiful shots Martin, it looks like all you put into practice really paid off.

[Martin Brazil]

Thanks very much Scott.

[Canon_Bob]

Welcome to the "dirty shirt" club! You are definitely off to a fantastic start with the technique! POV makes a world of difference. Light angle looks very good on all of these. Head turns are all perfect.

Only improvement suggestions I can make on these are for numbers 1 and 3, you have sticks going through their head. I always try to adjust my angles slightly to avoid having anything interfere with the head if possible. It is not always possible to do that, but I think on both of these moving slightly to your left may have done it. You do have to keep the light angle in mind when adjusting, though. that minor nit aside, these are excellet images! Congratulations!

[Loupey]

That's a great looking bird in #2. And it looks like you caught a flying bug in the scene at the same time too.

[Dylan8i]

very nice photos. i look forward to seeing some more foreign birds

[Martin Brazil]

Thanks very much guys, your comments mean a lot to me. Thanks also to Bob, your suggestions are always greatly appreciated. You are of course completely right about the sticks behind their heads and that is another thing I will bear in mind next time I'm up to my waist in a swamp.
For those unfamiliar with Brazilian birds No 1 is a Yellow Spine-tail, No 2 is a male White-headed Marsh-tyrant, No 3 looks very much like a female Chestnut-billed Seed-finch, although I might be wrong and No 4 is a Burrowing Owl. The White-headed Marsh-tyrant was a first for me but none of them are particularly difficult to spot.
Thanks again guys for all the invaluable help.