Close encounters of the Stint kind

[nick clayton]

123069
Little Stint
Covenham Reservoir, Lincolnshire, UK. 14/10/07

Canon EOS 350D
Canon 300mm f4 + Canon 1.4 extender II
1/2000 @ f8
0 EV
Aperture priority
ISO 400
Pattern

levels
curves
saturation
Noise reduction on background
Photoshop USM - subject only


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[Norm Dulak]

It's good to see you posting on the Avian forum, and there is much to like about this image. It's very sharp, with a good pose and eye contact. Where it might be improved would be to avoid the green oof grasses in front of the bird, which are distracting.

[Grace Scalzo]

Wow, you are a man of extremes, from your small in the frame image to this one. Usually stuff in front of the face bothers me, but here, my eye falls right on the bird's sharp eye and it doesn't bother me at all. The bright green does draw attention, tho, so I'd tone that down. Nice work!

[Dan Busby]

Nice close look at the finer detail of a Stint Nick. My main crit is that there appears to be some oof grass in front of the tip of the bird's bill that reduces detail and texture.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Nick, very nicely captured. Great detail and color on the plumage. The bg is superb, and I like the variations of browns and greens that go along with it. If you have the time, I would carefully clone out the grass along the beak and tone down the ones on the right of the bird (keep them, as it shows that there were some vegetation between you and and the bird, but bring the saturation down just a tad). Those are of course, my suggestions, but I still like the image as is. Nicely done!

[nick clayton]

Thanks for your replies, I have tried to rectify as per your comments. Please see below the Stint with the green grass colour reduced by using the color range tool to select it and then desaturate it by -20.

Rather than try and clone the distracting grass at the end of the bill which I would find near impossible, I have selected the end of the bill and put it on its own layer. I have then change the colour by using the eyedropper tool to sample the colour further up the bill then change the colour of the selected end of bill with the gray point tool, by inputting the RGB values the eyedropper tool had suggested. I then altered the contrast and brightness to try and match the tone, I'm not sure how successful I have been and would welcome any comments.

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