Still Hummingbird

[Bill Dix]

D90 with 80-400 VR @400 mm.
ISO 1600; 1/800s. @ f5.6.
HH, Matrix metering, 0EV, AF-A, AP.

After early morning on the beach with godwits and plovers, we returned to our B&B for breakfast and found Anna's and Allen's Hummingbirds zooming around the garden. This lass was kind enough to sit still for a brief moment. I experimented with various ways to deal with the BG, a busy jumble of Mexican Sage. This version uses the Gaussian Blur filter and pushes the slider all the way to the right. Let me know if this works.

C&C greatly appreciated. Bill

[Dave Leroy]

The bg looks very nice Bill, and I like how it fades out. The colours and exposure of the hummer is also well done although the bird does appear a bit soft to me. More sharpening? Dave

[Cheryl Flory]

i like how you got details in the black areas, but on my monitor there seems to be some overexposed whites.
great HA and pose

[Ben Egbert]

Great image, sharp, good HA and exposure. I sort of like the bkgrnd, but as soon as I saw it, I knew you had done something to that primary stalk just in front of the bird. It is too well defined to be OOF, and too blured to be sharp. I might have gone another round of bluring until it looked like the rest of the bckground.

suspect only other photographers will notice this.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - Might be going agaisnt the grain here- but for my tastes the BG doesnt really appeal, looks a little over worked - JUST my tatstes though!!
Some of your whites do seem to be pushing the envelope a little - could try toning them down in P.S.

Good HA and eye contact - although the bird does appear a tad soft - is it possible the point of focus was on the wing area rather than the head - some selective sharpening of the eye will give the impression of the whole bird being sharper.

Good show -keep em coming :)

[Bill Dix]

I admit this is a little bizarre, and expected a variety of comments. I masked the bird and stalk, and blurred everything else; unfortunately the stalk is a bit OOF. The focus point on the bird is indeed on the back; I managed to get off another shot with the focus on the head, but the HA wasn't as good on that one. The only whites that were clipped were in the area of pollen on the beak, which I tried to burn in PS but without much success. After posting, I did try another pass of sharpening, with an extra pass in the eye, which did help. I have posted here the original, straight out of the camera without adjustment, to show the problem. I like the bird but have no idea how to separate her from the BG. Any suggestions on how to salvage the image?

[Alfred Forns]

Hi Bill

Had looked at it before and the bg looked strange. With these is best to go with the flow and just smooth the bg a bit If you want to go that far its easier to select the bird and paste in the bg of your choice ... not much different !!!

To blur the bg make a layer and blur to taste then erase the effect over the bird .. lots of ways to do it !!!

[Gus Cobos]

Hi Bill,
I like the capture, agree with the techs. and advise given...the background does not bother me too much, but the bird is a tad soft...looking forward to the next one...:cool:

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - here is what I was thinking - just a little blur on the BG.
Masked out the bird - created a new layer - blurred the BG - Sharpened the bird and eye a tad.
How does this look to you???

[Bill Dix]

Lance, Looks good. Thanks for taking the time. Another of my versions was similar, with a layer using the Impressionist Blur on the BG, but I used more blur to try and accent the bird. By limiting the amount of blur your version appears less artificial, and the crop is also better. Hard to tell but it appears that this is also slightly less bright which may bring out a bit more detail.

Thanks.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - your welcome - I did darken the BG just a tad.
Looking forward to seeing more :)

[Kyle Marie Barcelos]

I like this picture a lot, IMO the BG is awesome. Great job:)