Hi all,
Do you have any photos that really didn’t make the grade, for technical or other reasons , but that you kept anyway and still like looking at?
Would you like to post some of your Favourite Failures in this thread, and perhaps say why they still appeal to you? Maybe they remind you of a person or place connected with a picture, or you just liked something about the way a bird flew, or the light..? Or maybe it's just good to have a place to post some of our Worst Photos - for those of us who'll never quite manage the technical brilliance of some of the amazing work in the Best Photos section. 
Flight is something that I never tire of watching, or attempting to capture - usually without much success. So I have a heap of wonky flight photos which are technical failures, yet I still enjoy looking at because they (for me anyway) seem to capture something about the incredible beauty, power and mystery of flight. Or pictures that tell part of a story, or just make me smile for some other reason.
What about you? Any bird-fails that you still kept because they had some personal appeal to you?
Cheers,
Chris
Here's one of mine.
Technically a complete flop. But the grasstree behind the magpie seems to give a feeling of speed at first glance and, for me anyway, it feels a bit like a chase scene out of a film. And I just get the urge to follow the bird, racing through the landscape. Either that or jump on its back for the ride.
Birds are so elegant and graceful…. Mostly!
I missed the focus on the first shot on the left but caught the gum-nut that it had just dropped. The bird then just seemed to fall off the tree. It may have been trying to recapture the nut, or perhaps it just lost it’s grip, or the twig snapped and they both fell together. But for a moment there it seemed like it had forgotten to read the How To Fly manual.
Dawn light.
All very wishy washy but it still appeals to me. Maybe it’s the angle of the wings, or something calm about the atmosphere as it flies towards the rising sun, but I just couldn’t bring myself to delete it. The shot I took just before that one has much better focus and detail on the bird, and some nice light through the tips of the feathers, but for some reason I just prefer this one. No accounting for taste...
Obviously, there's absolutely no detail at all on the dogbird feathers. Big fail there. But I just liked the intensity of his focus on the ball.
I certainly hope to improve my bird photography over the next year or so. But I’m not, and never will be, a dedicated bird photographer at the level of some of the highly accomplished members who post here. I’m not sure what the differences may be between the various types of Birders, Twitchers, backyard photographers, etc but I’m at heart just a Happy Snapper who sometimes takes photos of birds. So I have plenty of fails that I still keep for sentimental or other reasons. How about you?
I also enjoy taking a short series of photos that tell a little story. Events such as a pecking order argument, a response to other birds entering the area, a short feeding or flight sequence, etc. And I’ll keep a bad photo if it fits into a sequence that tells a story.
What slightly dodgy stuff do you keep?
This one didn't really work either. It's been cropped out of a much bigger picture and the exposure, focus, and just about everything else is way off.
But, for me, it has a sort of primaeval feel that meant I kept it. To most people it's proably just another bad bird shot that didn't make the grade. I don't know why, but it reminds me of an Indian or Aztec totem, some kind of scream at the world, that ensured that I couldn't put it in the bin just yet.
Far from a technical flop!
I'm struggling to understand how you took this one. It's almost as though you (the photographer) were flying at the same speed behind the bird??
Samford Valley Qld.
Oh! I have so many shots that could be suitable for this thread.
This could have been a fantastic shot but..............
Samford Valley Qld.
Thanks Reflex. I just thought the focus was a miss.
As to how I took it.... Shhhhh ... I don't want the other members to know that I can fly. It will look like cheating...
If I recall correctly (fairly rare at 68...) I was actually standing on our verandah watching a magpie on the carport roof. There was the usual glare off a tin roof plus the problem of the contrast between the black and the white of the feathers. So I was trying to work out what setting would give me photos where the light areas weren't completely blown out and the black parts having no detail. The worst of both worlds.... The picture below was the one immediate before.
And then he flew off. Our verandah is the same height as the carport roof, so I was now effectively standing right behind the bird. The camera couldn't keep up with the focus, but the shot still had some charm, perhaps because of the angle.
Love your shot above. SO NEAR, yet so far...
Ohhhhh, where would I begin! So very many I'll have to get my thinking cap on for that one! I love that maggie shot too Chris. Reflex, I have so many little bird shots like that one, lol, fast little devils, usually hiding in dim areas, and....
I will share a story from yesterday, although it's not birdy, so I hope that is ok? This has literallly left me crying in my milk, a once in a lifetime opportunity missed, because I ballsed up big time.
I was out for a quick spot of birding at Fernglade, near Burnie in Tas, which has an abundance of other wildlife, most notably Platypus. A visiting gentleman spotted me with my camera and asked if I would mind trying to see through my camera, what was splashing in the shallows in the dark on the other side of the river as it had been going on for 10 minutes or so. I looked over and thought it might be a beautiful Water Rat, aimed at the black splashing area and took what I hoped was at least an ID shot. Looked at the camera screen and found it to be a Platy rolling around. As I see them all the time, and with my mind on birds, we watched it for another few minutes to make sure it wasn't actually caught in anything, and just having a frolic, then when it swam away, thought no more about it.
Until....I got home and looked at the crappy photos up close. It was actually a female Platy on it's back feeding a very young baby Platy. And the baby is so blurry, even sharpened to digital noise heaven and back, it is almost unrecognisable. So disappointed with myself.
edited to add: the question marks after the tags on the shot are because I sent this on to a friend who is a Platy expert to confirm what I thought I was seeing.
West Coast Tasmania
Oh Annie! I can just image how you felt - I could almost shed a tear with you myself.
But look on the bright side, you've got a story that you'll never forget now. Sometimes the memory of "the one that got away" burns brighter and longer than the lovely crisp shot that gets admired and then filed away with the others.
Thank you for posting it.
Here’s another magpie photo that I just couldn’t delete. It was one of the first bird pictures I ever attempted. It was a young bird that was looking decidedly wobbly as it flapped about. As I lined it up it seemed to change its mind and attempt a sudden midair change of direction. Take A Bow!
The second one was clearly a UFO, so I couldn’t delete that. Proof that Aliens (or is the CIA?) have been sending some kind of stealth fighter to spy on me (or steal some of my short term memory perhaps…?) You can see the twin engines at the back, and those wings are obviously designed for speed and stealth.
The last one (which is actually the same bird as the UFO) was taken a couple of days ago. For those who still doubt that I can also fly, you can see that I’m hot on the tail of this one too. Can’t let it get away with pinching my best gum-nuts….
Anybody got any more favourite fails or misses that they'd like to post - just to cheer the rest of us up.
Here's a Scarlet Robin I managed to get quite nicely, but he turned the wrong way! So close...