>>3304047Check out the armchair photographer, talking about things he's never actually tried to deal with. Actually made me cringe. You're describing something to me that I'm very aware of, Anon.
>muh you can't see the whole nestGetting the whole nest in the shot would mean being a lot farther away, shooting less detail through more air, and having a lot more dead space top and bottom because it is treetop, in a dead tree. Some shots warrant the whole nest, others don't. This one doesn't, because there is no way to frame it and the bird well without being too far away.
Regarding composition in general, here are the main limiting factors:
1) The height of the nest
2) How close you can get to it physically
3) Obstructions such as trees and pieces of the nest itself
4) Shooting angle (gets higher the closer you get, to the point that you can't see in)
5) The lighting, which changes over the course of the day
6) Large birds only land into the wind, which changes constantly
7) The type of bird, and how it lands
Things the armchair photographer forgets about.
After that, you still have to deal with a wingspan up to 6 feet. What you end up with, especially with treetop nests, is a central mass with dead space all around. That and the fact that the bird will only be taking up anywhere from 1/4 to 1/8 of the upper frame. I do have shots like this that I really like, but they don't look good at 1000 pixels, which is what I post at here.
>demands exif>calls me a gearfagThat was my favorite part... you're even oblivious to yourself. Impressive. Here's another shot I ruined by not shooting the 12 foot wide nest as a whole, filling half of the frame with sky.
