Brown Thrasher in natural habitat

[Warren Spreng]

I say natural habitat because unless they are buried deep in some dark bushes, I see them foraging on the ground. I think it's rare to ever see them on a nice perch! So here he is foraging on the ground! Canon T3i, Tamron 150 - 600mm, 600mm, HH, ISO 800, 1/1600, f/6.3 Shadows lightened in LR, crop and NR to background in PS CC, light overcast mid-morning.

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[Sandy Witvoet]

Great "catch" Warren! Nice feather detail and the clover leaves add "shape" to the grassy area. Maybe a teeny bit less on top and "teeny bit less" more on the left?

[Warren Spreng]

Great "catch" Warren! Nice feather detail and the clover leaves add "shape" to the grassy area. Maybe a teeny bit less on top and "teeny bit less" more on the left?

Thanks Sandy! I do have some room to play with on this one in front of the bird, I'll take a look at it. Luckily it was in the clover and not in the area where the geese had gathered or I would have had a bit of work to do to "clean up" the BG if you know what I mean!

[Diane Miller]

Ah yes, geese -- they seem to have camped overnight at every spot where I want to try a belly-crawl.

Nice shot with good sharpness -- always ideal if the light is more behind you and at a low angle (as you know) but rarely possible (as you've probably also noticed). The shadows look OK to me -- I often lighten them similarly -- but one idea is to try fill flash if you have a popup flash on the camera. Set it at maybe -1 compensation. Practice on something cooperative like a small tree trunk. One possible issue is that it will fire a preflash for exposure calculations, which may startle the subject. In that case, when the shutter fires you'll get them in mid-jump with wings extended and you can impress people with your prowess at getting them just as they land....

If you haven't, you might experiment with Hue-Sat or Selective Color on the greens and see if you like any variations on the grass color. A large component of greens is yellow and messing with it would impact the bird's color, so that would need masking, but not too difficult.

[Warren Spreng]

Ah yes, geese -- they seem to have camped overnight at every spot where I want to try a belly-crawl.

Nice shot with good sharpness -- always ideal if the light is more behind you and at a low angle (as you know) but rarely possible (as you've probably also noticed). The shadows look OK to me -- I often lighten them similarly -- but one idea is to try fill flash if you have a popup flash on the camera. Set it at maybe -1 compensation. Practice on something cooperative like a small tree trunk. One possible issue is that it will fire a preflash for exposure calculations, which may startle the subject. In that case, when the shutter fires you'll get them in mid-jump with wings extended and you can impress people with your prowess at getting them just as they land....

If you haven't, you might experiment with Hue-Sat or Selective Color on the greens and see if you like any variations on the grass color. A large component of greens is yellow and messing with it would impact the bird's color, so that would need masking, but not too difficult.

Thanks Diane! I actually had been playing with the fill flash on some Tree Swallows right before I started walking away from them and as you can tell from the shot, into the sun! I didn't have time to flip up the flash as the Thrasher had already seen me so I dropped to the ground and just shot a burst at the settings I was on. I actually wanted to use another image where you can tell he is running but there was too much on the bird that was OOF to use it. Good idea about the Selective Color and the grass, I may play with that a bit.