Looking Up... Tricolor

[Charles Wesley]

This guy was way to active for me last week at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm bird rookery. I guess waiting paid off. Tried to apply new ideas and principles from some workshops at our most recent First Coast Birding & Nature Festival. The rapid head movement forced me to lock on tho AF and then switch back to manual focus. Not sure I like the background gradiant. I just calibrated my monitor last night. The bill looks good to me on both my Dell UltraSharp PC monitor and MacBook Pro HG LCD. What do you think?

I used my 5D Mk 11, EF 100- 400 f4.5- 5.6L, 1.4TC, B.B. with 550 EX flash and tripod. My exposure was was 1/ 800 sec. @ f/5.6 with 200 ISO.

Enjoy
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com (http://naturesphotographs.com)

[Randy Stout]

Charles:

Bird in great breeding plumage. Like his angle in the frame, head angle.

The strong diagonal created by the head angle, crest and slope of back all work for me. I might consider a very small crop in from the left, just personal taste.

Exposure good. I find the image slightly soft, and would hit it with another round of USM.

In a perfect world, would would like the brown at the very bottom of the frame to be the same as rest of background.

Thanks for sharing.

Randy

[Charles Wesley]

Randy,

Thanks for the critique. I really appreciate it. Here's more sharpening. Hopefully, I did not over do it.

Please let me know what you think....
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL
http://naturesphotographs.com

[Stu Bowie]

Super pose, and love the curve of the neck. Lovely breeding colours, and stands out nicely from the darker BG. I agree with Randy to crop off from the left. Your repost of the sharpening works well, but you have increased noise in the BG. I think you have sharpened the whole image, without selecting just the bird.

[Charles Wesley]

Stuart,

That was my bad. Here's a selective sharpening of the bird.
Thanks for the help...
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Charlie Wesley
St. Augustine Beach, FL

[Juan Aragonés]

Everything has been said Charles. You did a good job in your second repost. Do not forget to consider a crop of the image to avoid the centerimg of the eye in the frame. If this one were mine I would crop from the left and bottom. I think that most part of the free room between the crest tip and the left edge of the frame can be croped without problem. The brownish area in the bottom of the frame needs to be crop too. Very nice species and excelent exposure job.

[Doug Brown]

In addition to all the good advice that you've gotten already, I would lighten the BG behind the bill to make it stand out. Do you recall what your flash exposure compensation was set too?

[Charles Wesley]

Doug,

Thanks for the response. My 550 EX was set to ETTL at -2 exp. comp with the BB attached. I was also on high synch. Both +- buttons pushed on the back of the 550.
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Charlie Wesley

[Marina Scarr]

Your final repost as far as noise, sharpening and colors looks very good. I rather like the darker BG. I do agree the picture needs a slight crop from the left. I would also remove the second catchlight.

Thank you for sharing.