Bay Backed Shrike - in spotlight

[Vaibhav Garge]

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2788/4124996316_47cd30f698_o.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/41386727@N05/4124996316/)

Techinical Details : Nikon D80 | Tamron 200-500mm | 500mm | f/8 | ISO-400 | 1/640s | Aperture Priority | -1/3rd Ev | Evaluative Metering

Comments and suggestions welcome.

[Randy Stout]

Vaibhav:

Congrats on your first image post.

I like the spotlight effect on the bird, the framing provided by the two upright twigs, good exposure on the bird, esp. since it is very easy to overexpose the whites in spotlight images with darker BG.

For me the vertical tan bar in front of the bird is a bit distracting. I would try to tone it down and also lower the brightness of the far left twig standing up. In spotlight images, I prefer the subject to command our attention, and the background to be unobtrusive.

Again, welcome to BPN.

Cheers

Randy

[Mital Patel]

welcome to BPN vaibha and wish you good luck for the future posts. as this is first post of yours i would keep mum and looking forward for next post :)

[Vaibhav Garge]

Mital bhai, I request you to comment on the post without thinking it as a first post. :)

[Mital Patel]

i agree on giving it vertical look.
also it looks bit darker so enhance it by atleast 1 fstop or 2 as what required and dont get burn out.

[Randy Stout]

Vaibhav:

Per your request, here is a quick pass at what I mentioned earlier.

I used the eye dropper tool to select the color I wanted. Chose one close to the bird so the blend would be fairly smooth.

Use the brush tool, 10% opacity, and painted in the color over the tan stripe. My goal wasn't to eliminate any variation in the background, just soften it a bit.

I use a pen tablet (Intuous) which makes it easier to feather in the change, but you certainly can do it without.

I also lowered the brightness of the far left twig as mentioned.

There are other more sophisticated ways to do the same thing, such as selecting the area and then adjusting your selection, but the tech. mentioned seems to work OK.

Cheers

Randy

[Vaibhav Garge]

Thanks Randy for processing the photo and sharing the information. This looks really good.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Welcome Bhai.. nice points above, the repost works well.. keep them coming..