Cactus Wren

[Jake Levin]

I was in the desert southwest for non-photographic reasons, but I brought a small rig along since I knew from being here before that the birds were approachable. I got a good number of throwaway "skyscraper" shots with the bird on top of a cactus, much too high up for a good composition, but every now and then, they came down to a lower perch. For the record, this bird is standing on a jumping cholla, probably one of the more unpleasant forms of plant life in the world (right up there with poison ivy). Jumping chollas do not actually jump out at you--it's a plant, after all--but they are so loosely held together, all it takes is the slightest touch to break off the stem and have it latch onto your clothing or skin, spines and all.

7D mkII
100-400 f/4-5.6 IS II zoom
ISO 800, 1/640 @ f/5.6
DPP conversion, PS optimized (about a 30% crop, NIK detail extractor and eye work)

[William Dickson]

Hi Jake. It looks to me that the WB is off, the image looks too yellow on my monitor. Maybe this is how you saw it, it is the desert after all. Lovely looking bird and perch. I like the pose and HA. Interesting info about the plants, sounds nasty. Thanks for sharing, as I have never seen this bird before.

Will

[Arthur Morris]

Ditto Mr. Dixon. Too yellow. with love, artie

[Jake Levin]

Here is a repost with less yellow. I desaturated the yellows with a hue/saturation layer, then added 15 blue and cyan on a colour balance layer. Does it look better to you?

[Isaac Grant]

Hi Jake. I think the image is still too yellow. I have mentioned it a bunch of times already but these types of images present problems for dslr sensors. Don't know the science behind it but when photos are taken in early morning or late evening light they are over way over saturated. You dream of that perfect light but then in post you need to reduce it quite a bit to get the bird to look natural and the light as well. I would go back to the RAW file and in DPP perhaps lower the saturation -1. Or go into the yellows and reduce them quite a bit until you have a more natural looking bird. Then import the file into PS and you will only have to do minor adjustments. On a separate note, I would prefer to take off a little of the bottom left of the frame and not have the bird almost right in the center.

[Jake Levin]

Still? It was a very yellow-orange light that I took it in. I will try lowering the overall saturation and running some layer masks with targeted desaturations on the bird and the cactus.

[Isaac Grant]

In my opinion it still needs it. Cactus Wrens have white chests and creamy flanks and undertail coverts. The strong yellows are overpowering the subtle tones of the bird. Usually in this light I desaturate my shots quite a bit.

[Glenn Pure]

Jake, a really interesting little bird, well photographed in a nice pose on this nasty plant. Glad we don't have them! I understand where you are coming from on the yellow as it's how the light was. A couple of things on that from my experience a) our eyesight does adjust quite a bit to the ambient light colour so it will look a lot more extreme on the image recorded by the camera (which creates an objective, not perceptual, view of the scene) - so some toning down in usually necessary. For me, I think this frame just looks too light overall and that's where I'd concentrate may attention in the first instance. These shots are never easy to deal with but you've done quite well IMHO.