Waxwing

[Rich Steel]

Hi

There has been an invasion of waxwings to the UK this winter. I have been watching their progress as they have slowly eaten their way down the country. A couple of flocks were reported in a place about an hour north of home so I decided to try and find them. I spent two hours driving round the last locations they were reported but without success and was just at the point of returning home when a report text came through on my mobile for a flock. 10 minutes later and with a bit of Sat Nav help and I had found them. Saved by technology!!!

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/preswax15.jpg

Taken with 1Dmk3 and 500mm lens with 1.4TC at ISO400 F7.1 +0.67EV Evaluative metering at 1/640s.

Cheers

Rich

[Tony House]

Oh yes, love the pose and the light is superb, the B/G looks nice too, brick wall?

I missed them in Norfolk and haven't heard of any turning up in Milton Keynes which they normally do, cracking bird, well photographed.

Very nice work.
Tony

[Daniel Cadieux]

Nice! Love the downward pose, eyecontact, and of course the berry in the bill. I'm glad you left the branches in the URC. The BG colours complement your subject nicely. Good use of technology :-)

[Leroy Laverman]

Really lovely shot. The fall colors blend very well with this bird. The pale berries are nice as well. My first reaction was to clone the URC but upon retrospect I think Daniel is right about leaving them in. It gives a nice compositional balance to the whole shot.

[Arthur Morris]

Great pose and I love this for all of the other reasons mentioned above. Would love to see a HORZ version with the whole spray of berries included.

[kiko arcas]

Wowww i love it!! we´ll done.

[Arthur Morris]

Hi Kiko, And welcome. We appreciate your visiting us and hope that you do stick around. When you like an image, please let us know why you like it, And please see the Sticky at the top of this Forum page. Thank you sir.

[Rich Steel]

Thanks for the replies and comments. Artie horizontal version below although I am not sure the twigs in the URC work quite as well in this version.

http://i89.photobucket.com/albums/k217/squidfish_2006/preswax15-2.jpg

Cheers

Rich

[Leroy Laverman]

I like your OP better. The berries compete too much in the horizontal version IMO. The horizontal might work better if you had panned to the right so that the bird would be leaning into the frame rather than out. Good vision with your crop above.

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Rich. With all due respect to Leroy, I do believe that the horiztonal version, the repost if you would, is the far, far superior image. Rules are meant to be broken in situations like this. Why do I like the original HORZ image better than the cropped version that Rich posted first? With the spray of berries cut in two the image is extremely disjointed. For years I have been teaching (and writing) "If an object is worth including in the frame, it is almost always best to include the whole thing (the spray of berries here), and to give it a comfortable border." This image proves the rule. I would be interested to see what others think.

For the repost I eliminated the twigs in the urc and worked on the BKGR a bit to smooth it out.

[Stu Bowie]

I like this comp better, as it shows all the berries as suggested by Artie. There's also enough space at the bottom of the berries, together with space for the waxwing to look into. I would clone out the twigs in the URC. Superb colours captured in this too. Well done Rich.

[Rich Steel]

Hi Artie

The berries chopped in half was bothering me to. I'm glad you made me return to relook at the raw file as I much prefer the horizontal crop and the loss of the twigs in the URC looks better on this version. Many thanks for your suggestions and taking the time to rework the image.

I am interested in what method you used to smooth the background as I several photos taken during the session which could probably benefit from it.

Cheers

Rich

[Arthur Morris]

Rich asked, "I am interested in what method you used to smooth the background as I several photos taken during the session which could probably benefit from it."

I believe that the methods I used are covered in detail in Digital Basics. I first used the Clone Stamp at 100% to get rid of the twigs in the urc. Then I used th Patch Tool to even out the various tonalities. That however, left some lumpy areas so I went back to the Clone Stamp this time at about 50%. Even out the lighter areas. Then made a QM of most of teh BKGR and did about a 15 pixel Gaussian blur. As I said, that is all in the DB PDF plus tons and tons more including our complete digital workflow.

[Rod Wiley]

Love the photo and the background

[John Ippolito]

Rich, this looks pretty super on my monitor. The inverted pose, berry in mouth and great BG color. I wasn't sure how it could be improved upon until I saw the Horizontal repost. I see what Artie was referring to. Now when I go back to the OP it looks truncated and unnatural when compared to the repost. Excellent job.

[Rich Steel]

Thanks for the info on the background smoothing Artie and your comments Rod and John.

Cheers

Rich

[DanWalters]

Really like the repost with the branches removed. Love the comp and the background colors. Nice light as well.