Western Bluebird

[Lothar Katz]

190913
My first post, so greetings from Berlin, Germany. This is one of the better shots I took on a recent trip across the Southwestern US, at Bryce Canyon NP.

Nikon D850 + 500mm PF, f/5.6, 1/500s, ISO 1000. Heavily cropped; darkened branch; some sharpening.

EDIT: No idea why the post apparently shows two versions of the image, a previous one I removed and the one I intended to post.

[Joseph Przybyla]

Hi Lothar, welcome to BPN. Really nice first post, beautiful colors on the bird, nice background. The perch is a tad large but if not a setup the bird chooses that. Lovely image, thank you for sharing.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Lothar and welcome to BPN. I like the sharp subject and the soft light. The perch is much too large and complex for the relatively small bird. I'll be back in a bit ...

with love, artie

[Arthur Morris]

If it fits with your personal ethics, changes like this are fairly easy. LMK if you would like some info. I ran Topaz DeNoise on Low Light as it was very noisy. Shoot me an e-mail for more info.

with love, artie

[dankearl]

Art's crop show the potential. Keep at it, this looks fine,

[Lothar Katz]

Thanks, Joe. Very kind of you. The bird and I had a conversation about it, but he stubbornly refused to move over to the other branch I pointed out to him. ;-) Lothar

[Lothar Katz]

Hi Artie & Dan,

Thank you very much for your words of welcome. That was kind. What was less kind, and what I am about to observe because I decided I won't stay on this forum anyway, is something else:

I've been an active photo amateur for more than 25 years and have been shooting birds for at least 15 of them. I owned at least ten DSLRs and three MLs, as well as countless lenses. I have been using Photoshop since 1989 or so, way before getting into photography myself. I currently use PS, LR, DxO Photolab, Luminar 4, Topaz DeNoise/Sharpen/GigaPixel, and other photo software quite competently, all depending on the individual edits I want to make. Though I live in a big city and thus have less immediate access and opportunity, I am truly passionate about shooting birds. On this last trip alone, I identified 72 different species I was able to shoot.

Yet, you are apparently intent on treating everyone who joins as a complete rookie. Let me remind you that someone not having spent as much time here as you did does not tell you a thing about how much time they spent on photography, or how much experience they have. Everyone deserves the same respect, at least until they give you reason to think differently.

"LMK if you would like some info [about noise reduction!]." "Shoot me an email for more info." "Keep at it, this looks fine." Seriously? Do you approach everyone on this forum with an attitude that oozes "Me Tarzan, you Jane"? From browsing other C&C posts, I already had the impression that there is a good amount of know-it-all'ing going on on this forum, but this personal first impression was still more than I am willing to take.

I have written several thousands of posts on other forums myself, for instance on DPReview and Nikonites, and rarely found this attitude there. There is a world of difference between effectively saying "You need to do this" and "In my view, this image might benefit from some noise reduction. I would also remove some of the branches of the perch." I appreciate honest & frank C&C, but you may want to realize that 'honest and frank' is not the same thing as 'patronizing and condescending'. Sorry, but this experience gave me the impression that this is not a community of which I want to be a member. Feel free to write me off as an idiot, or give this some serious thought. Your choice.

FWIW: When writing my post, I erroneously uploaded a version of the image without NR first but did not post it yet. Noticing my mistake, I deleted it and uploaded the correct one. After posting, BOTH of them were suddenly showing, hence my addendum to the text. This morning, the second, correct image had suddenly disappeared (Automatically? By editor intervention? No idea.). The dual images might have been caused by a rookie error on my end, though I've not experienced similar issues on other forums. In any case, the second image I posted WAS corrected using Topaz DeNoise.

Lastly, I am admittedly weak enough to give in to the temptation to know-it-all you back: no, Artie, I am not overly fond of your edit. If I were to apply as much sharpening as you did, I would at least slightly blur the perch afterwards. As I see it, it now competes too much with the bird and looks very unnatural. For my taste, there is now also too much empty space to the right of the perch, so I would crop some there and then darken the edge. And, no, Dan, at least technically Artie's crop cannot show the potential because there is no crop. He did not crop at all.

Lothar

[Arthur Morris]

Jeez, I though I was trying to help. As far as sharpening, I did not apply any. One man's helpfulness is another's condescending and patronizing. As far as "using" Topaz, your original post was very noisy.

We wish you the best,

with love, artie

[dankearl]

Wow... Foolish me, I did not recognize the genius in your photo, Lothar. I did mistake Arts repost as a crop mainly because it was about a 100% improvement.
However on second thought, you have been shooting birds so long and are so good and needed no critique apparently so you should move on...

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Lothar ... welcome and good bye to and from BPN .
That was a short trip .... :w3
Surprised that you " give up " that quickly , albeit nothing happened .... IMHO .
Thought we ....:w3 .... have a thicker fur , but not all are the same .
Personally I would overthink your decision .... but your call .

Regarding your image .... well a nice looking subject . Sadly the IQ has suffered a bit from large cropping ... and for optimal color output I would recommend to save the file in sRGB color space , not in Adobe RGB .
From the POV of the tonal range , I personally think the range from lights to mid tones are a bit thin. just my 2 cents ...

TFS and greetings to Berlin from Dortmund

Cheers Andreas

[arash_hazeghi]

BPN is a critique forum if you cannot take critique you should move on

This image doesn't work for me, it is shot at a steep angle, it is quite noisy and lacking in IQ, the perch is too big and distracting. It's a delete to be honest.

Artie spent some time to improve an image so I would thank him for that.

this is odd because we have quite a few members from Europe and in general I find German people very humble, thoughtful , methodic and eager to achieve absolute perfection.




good luck