Hawaiian Endemic Birds: I'iwi

[Vishnu Reddy]

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A relatively common endemic bird on the big island of Hawaii is the I'iwi. Here it is feeding on the nectar from the flowers of Ohia tree in Hakalau NWR. Comments and suggestions to improve the image are welcome.

Mahalo
Vishnu

Image Details
Camera: 7D; ISO: 640; Shutter Speed: 1/2000th sec; Lens: Canon 500 mm F4 L @ F/4.
Image Processing: Lightroom 5 cropped, brightness, contrast, clarity and vibrance adjusted. NR also performed in LR5.

[vishaljadhav]

Such a beautiful bird here Vishnu
Great to see it
I like the composition, feel some of the reds are bit hot and you can just may be handle those in photoshop
You are bringing up great beauties i am just loving these

[Vishnu Reddy]

Thanks a lot Vishal. I don't have photoshop but just LR5. I will tr and see if I can lower the vibrance a bit. I am always worried about saturating the reds on I'iwi because it is very easy to do so. This was shot in late afternoon in near full sunlight which made it that much harder not to burn through the reds.

Mahalo
Vishnu

[Diane Miller]

The reds don't look that hot to me. But reds, oranges and yellows are often a problem in digital photography (or more precisely, in the raw converter's interpretation of them). Have a look at the HSL section in LR and you can calm things down quite a bit by just using the Red slider and lowering saturation a little, and darkening and maybe tweaking the hue a little. That gives you control over a fairly narrow range of colors instead of the wide range that Vibrance or Saturation covers.

You can also change the camera calibration in the last panel. Sometimes the default Adobe Standard isn't the best.

If you really want control, the tint and Primary sliders in that panel can do some powerful stuff. But that's sort of a "Professional driver, don't try this at home" thing...

Stuning bird! But it looks like the focus sensor hit the flowers in the LL.

[Vishnu Reddy]

Thanks a lot Diane. I will look into the settings in LR. You do have an excellent eye! The camera and 500 combo does front focus, I have the LenAlign tool and hopefully have the microadjust taken care of.
Mahalo
Vishnu

[John Chardine]

What an absolute thrill to see this bird Vishnu!!! The colour of the bird in the image is how I imagine it. The white blob upper right stands out a bit but not too distracting. I think your best course of action now is to choose a nice overcast day and go in pursuit of this species again. In those conditions, I am sure the bird would almost glow with its own light!