Blue on Blue... Florida Scrub Jay

[Joseph Przybyla]

The most endangered bird in Florida because of habitat loss. It needs areas of sandy soil with Scrub Oaks six to eight feet tall with few tall trees. As housing developments go up more habitat is lost. There are movements and programs to acquire land to protect the habitat, hopefully they will be successful to protect the birds for the future. Coments and critique welcomed and appreciated. Thank you for viewing.

Nikon D500
Nikon 80-400mm F/4.5-5.6 VRII AF-S ED image captured at 400mm
1/2500 F/8 Matrix Metering EV +1 ISO 560 AWB, camera supported by a monopod
Post processed in Lightroom Classic CC and Photoshop CC 2018
Cropped for composition and presentation

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, perch, sharpness and composition. I feel there is a blue cast on the whole image. I did a little tweak in PS and feel it looked more natural.

[Joseph Przybyla]

I like the pose, perch, sharpness and composition. I feel there is a blue cast on the whole image. I did a little tweak in PS and feel it looked more natural.

Hi Jim, thank you for viewing and commenting. Here is an edit and repost. I adjusted the white balance.

[Randy Stout]

Joe:

I had the exact same impression as Jim about the color cast. I think it could go even more neutral.
I like the composition, perch, head angle , wind blown feathers.

Cheers

Randy

[Jim Crosswell]

I think that Randy has got it right. Repost looks great.

[Isaac Grant]

I really like this one Joe. Beautiful details and on an interesting perch. Love the wind swept looking feathers as well. The colors on Randy's repost are best and most realistic, but I still think that even a touch more of the blue cast could be removed to get the color perfect. As presented I think the grays on the throat are still too blue. Same with the belly. The grays on these birds are more of a pale gray with brownish tones towards the flanks and on the mantle.

[Raybel Robles]

Lovely photo, the guys above have done a great job on fixing the blue cast. I perhaps would be tempted to lower the blue of the sky just so slightly aswell.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Thanks everyone for viewing, commenting and your suggestions. I fixed the blue cast in Photoshop, I think this is about where it should be.

[Isaac Grant]

Perfect now Joe! Now that is one beautiful image of these charismatic birds. Could you describe exactly what you did to remove the blue cast. What ever it was, it was exactly what was needed. Now you can see the subtle differences between the throat , belly and the flanks that have that brownish tones to them. Curious was it banded? Did you get lucky that it had the banded foot tucked in? It is so hard to find one of these guys that isn't banded.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Perfect now Joe! Now that is one beautiful image of these charismatic birds. Could you describe exactly what you did to remove the blue cast. What ever it was, it was exactly what was needed. Now you can see the subtle differences between the throat , belly and the flanks that have that brownish tones to them. Curious was it banded? Did you get lucky that it had the banded foot tucked in? It is so hard to find one of these guys that isn't banded.

Hi Isaac, here is how I removed the blue color cast. I took the image into Photoshop and made a copy of the background layer to work on. I selected Filter>Blur>Average which made the image all blue the color of the cast. Next I selected Cntrl + I to get the inverse of the blue color which changed the image to what looked like a burnt umber color. On the right hand side under the layer display I selected Color as the blending mode adjusting the Opacity slider until it looked right to my eye. In this case it was 20% Opacity. Then I flattened the layers on the image to save the changes.

None of the Scrub Jays I saw that day were banded. The area is only a small little pocket of their habitat. If you are coming to Florida message me and I will tell you where it is.

[gail bisson]

Thanks for the PP lesson Joe. I will bookmark this as I have never done this PP before.
Lovely repost and excellent IQ,
Gail

[Robert vanMierop]

Huge Scrubby fan. That last image best depicts the actual colors of the bird and the sky. Nice perch and detail on the bird. So many are banded it's nice to see one with no bling.