I've come up with a new way of producing backgrounds for my bird portraiture in the garden. I became fed up with daubing paint or pastels on to boards and it not looking quite right. I then had the idea of actually photographing appropriate backgrounds (out of focus) and having them printed out as A2 posters. I sent eight of them away to be printed. Well, they have come back and I tried a couple out today and they worked great! I have found a way of mounting them on a board so that I can change them easily and I had a session in the garden today.
They worked just as I had hoped. I could do with having a few darker ones, as when the sun was shining on them, the ones I used were a little bright, but the beauty of this method is that I can easily take a few more, send them off and have new backgrounds in a couple of days.
My main problem today was the lack of birds landing on the perch. I need to arrange it so they have to queue up for the feeder, but I don't like stopping them feeding. It's not actually back to the drawing board, more a question of tweaking it to get them where I want them.
I did get two photos of a robin, one of a greenfinch, a super close up of a female blackbird and another of a wood pigeon. Using the out of focus background means I can use a small aperture, giving great depth of field and tremendous detail.
All in all, I am very happy and ready to try again.