Bohemian Waxwing

[George Hagi]

http://img195.imageshack.us/img195/1245/bw3c.jpg (http://img195.imageshack.us/i/bw3c.jpg/)




NIKON D200 & 200.0 mm f/2.0 @ f/2.8, 1/350, ISO 200

[Doug Brown]

I like the use of shallow DOF here; you're sharp where you need to be. The soft light is nice as is the OOF habitat. I would tone down or remove the dark branches behind the head. And I would move the bird to the right of the frame.

[Dan O'Leary]

Great sharpness and beautiful colors and softness to this image. I wish you had taken a step or two to your right, as this might have freed up the space behind the bird's head (preventing overlap), improved the head angle, and reduced the "in your face-ness" of the perch.

I'm guessing you did well to capture this with a 200mm... very close.

[George Hagi]

I like the use of shallow DOF here; you're sharp where you need to be. The soft light is nice as is the OOF habitat. I would tone down or remove the dark branches behind the head. And I would move the bird to the right of the frame.

Thanks Doug . I like the idea for the branches .

[paul leverington]

I think Doug hit the nail on the head. I would love to see a bit more dof at least to where the other foot was in focus.

The light on this bird is so incredibly sweet, I wonder how you achieved that. Did you do some exposure combining perhaps, some curves tweaking, or was the light just actually glowing him up at the time you took the shot. It reminds me of exactly the effect one gets when using a diffuser panel. Whatever the source it is fantastically sweet. Do tell us please if you would.

Paul

[Arthur Morris]

Welcome rockport5. Please go in and switch that to your full and proper name. Thanks.

Love the soft light and the sweet colors. I am fine with the d-of but would have locked focus and pointed the lens well to the left to move the bird to the right side of the frame....

[John Chardine]

I also like the warm, soft light. Agree that the bird needs to be a bit to the right in the frame. I find the eye a big distraction. I think it is suffering from too much lightening. Waxwings have dark-reddish eyes and there's not much you can do with them. Here I darkened the eye in general, then selectively lightened the highlights in the eye and darkened the pupil with some burning in and dodging. I also used a small, soft blur brush to remove some of the graininess in the eye. In the meantime I cropped to just to see what it would look like.

As Paul said, sweet! Well done!

[Harshad Barve]

Big welcome to BPN
cute bird , sweet light and BG , repost looks better , very well done here
TFS

[Kiran Poonacha]

Great looking Bird and nice details on the face, the repost works well, would love to another crop though, congrats..

[Arthur Morris]

Hi John, Well done on the re-posted eye. Like the crop too but it needs the room on our left.

[paul leverington]

After looking at this for about ten minutes I have to say that I would prefer the original crop by far, but ONLY if the background had more to it. It's rather void of interest and the brighter areas are not so in the best places, but if the right say had some nice OOF sprigs and berries and branches, I think this would be awesome with the bird centered like it was. The crop for me seems more necessary for eliminating insignificant interest areas than for actual best comp--if I could pull on the imagination for a minute. I think it's because of how luciously sweet and pastel everything looks--just the color carries so much power I want more and more and more. Cropping annihilates this feeling to a great degree. It's interesting at least to think about it.

Rockport--if you have other shots with some interesting stuff in it you might try and paint in some things on the right, just to see what you might come up with. The eye is sooo much better. The light is so over and beyond the top. Are you going to share the specs on how that was attained with us.

Paul

[George Hagi]

Thank you all for your time.

[George Hagi]

After looking at this for about ten minutes I have to say that I would prefer the original crop by far, but ONLY if the background had more to it. It's rather void of interest and the brighter areas are not so in the best places, but if the right say had some nice OOF sprigs and berries and branches, I think this would be awesome with the bird centered like it was. The crop for me seems more necessary for eliminating insignificant interest areas than for actual best comp--if I could pull on the imagination for a minute. I think it's because of how luciously sweet and pastel everything looks--just the color carries so much power I want more and more and more. Cropping annihilates this feeling to a great degree. It's interesting at least to think about it.

Rockport--if you have other shots with some interesting stuff in it you might try and paint in some things on the right, just to see what you might come up with. The eye is sooo much better. The light is so over and beyond the top. Are you going to share the specs on how that was attained with us.

Paul

Nice idea but no time for spending hours in Photoshop , maybe I will some day .
Thanks for your time and comments .:)

[George Hagi]

Welcome rockport5. Please go in and switch that to your full and proper name. Thanks.

Love the soft light and the sweet colors. I am fine with the d-of but would have locked focus and pointed the lens well to the left to move the bird to the right side of the frame....

I Did point the lens to the left but it was distracting by other out of focus and birds , branches , in this case this is the best I could get .

[George Hagi]

I also like the warm, soft light. Agree that the bird needs to be a bit to the right in the frame. I find the eye a big distraction. I think it is suffering from too much lightening. Waxwings have dark-reddish eyes and there's not much you can do with them. Here I darkened the eye in general, then selectively lightened the highlights in the eye and darkened the pupil with some burning in and dodging. I also used a small, soft blur brush to remove some of the graininess in the eye. In the meantime I cropped to just to see what it would look like.

As Paul said, sweet! Well done!

This is the original without any PP . Below zero cloudy low contrast , horrible weather in New England in the end of December .
http://img11.imageshack.us/img11/1229/poi1233.jpg (http://img11.imageshack.us/i/poi1233.jpg/)