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Norman Pyett
09-13-2008, 11:06 AM
On a recent trip with Jim Caldwell to Banos, Ecuador we had the opportunity to photography a wide variety of birds.
Canon 1D MIIN 1/60, F6.3, ISO 400, 400mm F5.6L with Better Beamer
All comments welcome, especially w/photoshop.
Chris Dodds
09-13-2008, 12:38 PM
Hi Norman,

While this is an amazingly beautiful bird, I think I would like to see a little more detail in the blacks and a little more room all around.
Desmond Chan
09-13-2008, 02:21 PM
On my monitor, this photo looks a bit dark overall. I could live with some of the distracting elements in both the foreground and the background, but the biggest issue I have is the lack of details in the red and some of the dark areas. The red looks...too red to me :) I could be wrong but it also looks the the focus is not on the eye, too. The shallow depth of field also is not helping there.

My $0.02.
Norman Pyett
09-13-2008, 02:46 PM
Thanks for your comments. This picture is not touched up in photoshop. The only thing I did was to crop & size for the BPN
Thanks
Tony Whitehead
09-13-2008, 04:39 PM
This really is a colourful bird in a difficult lighting situation,Norman. Photoshop is an essential part of getting the most from an image and sharpening for output is an important part of that. I have done a basic shadow/highlight adjustment and then levels - mainly setting the right slider to just clip and then lightening the image a little by moving the midpoint slider a little to the left. There seems to be a lot of jpg artifact especially in the dark areas and I have run a little noise reduction followed by sharpening for web output. If this was captured as a RAW file you would be able to extract a lot more by reconverting the original. Some patching and cloning to clean up the crossing branches and sticks would be the next step
Linda Robbins
09-15-2008, 08:19 PM
Such amazingly beautiful birds, but their habitat makes them a challenge to photograph, Wonderful to see one of these beauties close up. Tony has given you great advice above. Looking forward to seeing more of your images from Ecuador...one of my favorite countries for photographing birds!