Kookaburra portrait

[caseyargall]

hi, sorry i havent been around much, i have been lost in self pity because i was having trouble getting the shot...anyway im trying my best....here is a kookaburra photo i took today, id love some constructive feedback...i'm building up a portfolio for a contest i will be entering within the next few months and need to know what doesnt work and if so how to improve so i can go get the shot again...thanks from casey.
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2715/4166176818_28682677c8_o.jpg

[caseyargall]

oh forgot:
f/5.6, 1/200sec,iso400 at 200mm,patial metering.
flash used was 430exII on minus 1.
on manual mode using a 1000d.

[Krijn Trimbos]

Hi Casey,
I like the eye contact and feather detail in this shot, but I do have some suggestions.

First I would make sure for a portrait that the entire head is within the frame. A standard portrait without the whole head doesn't really work for me, unless you have something special in minde like focussing more attention to the eyes for instance.

Sharpness of the eyes in these kind of shots are most important and you did pretty well there, only you got steele eyes, which you could try to get rid of in PS (select the part of the eye that is blueish, feather a couple of pixels, and desaturate + darken this part until it looks black).

For a straight at the camera look like this I would suggest to crop a bit more and maybe go vertical on this one, for a more profile look (which I really would like to see!!) I would probably keep the crop the way it is.

I am watching this on my office monitor so I can't be sure about this but it seems like your whites are a bit on the hot side, going back to RAW and pulling back the exposure slider would remedy this. Or the next time be sure to compensate for the FF a bit more.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,

Krijn

[caseyargall]

hey Krijn, thankyou for the in depth reply.
I will try what you say about the eyes, would -2 insted of -1 on the flash help this in future shots?
the kookaburras come down everyday so i will try again.
thanks from casey.

[Krijn Trimbos]

Hi Casey,
Steele eyes are generated by the light of the flash illuminating the back of the eye. The chances of this get higher the wider, the lens is at the moment of illumination. With FF in dark conditions this poses a problem, dark conditions = wide open lenses + FF = steele eyes. What you could do is trying to adjust the angle of flash so that the bundle of light doesn't hit the back of the eyes directly or you could try to let the FF light bounce off something else towards the bird (there are a lot of different reflection screens, I think you call them, available commercially and you could also try to make one yourself with alluminum foil although those don't work as good) . As long as you FF the bird directly into its eyes adjusting the Flash compensation negatively wouldn't do a thing I don't think.

Good luck!

Krijn

[caseyargall]

hi, krijn, sorry first for deleting my photo, i had it on my flickr account which is for my good photos so i deleted it....2nd thanks for the info but what does FF mean?