Yellow-necked spurfowl

[Ajit Huilgol]

This is a large francolin with a blackish bill, distinctive bare yellow throat and red-orange skin around the eyes.
Species: Yellow-necked spurfowl (Francolinus leucoscepus)
Location: Tarangire, Tanzania
Date: May, 2009
Equip: Canon 1D Mlll, Canon 500 f4 with 1.4 TC
Specs: ISO 320, f 7.1, 1/1000s, beanbag on vehicle

Thank you for taking the time out to look, and for your comments/critiques

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Angle, eye contact and BG look very good. I'm undecided about the clipped leaves on the left and wish the feet were not obstructed.

[Kiran Poonacha]

Beautiful one Guruve, nice HA, colours and and clean BG...

[Doug Brown]

The bird looks good although I wish the feet were unobstructed. I would probably remove the leaves on the left. I might go with a 5x7 crop rather than a 4x6, adding a little canvas on the sides and taking a little off the top.

[Daniel Cadieux]

Good pose and BG. Perch looks nice too excpet, like the others mentioned before, I wish the extra branches weren't there to obstruct the feet. I guess it was wriggling its' tail with the bit of motion blur in it:). I would not hesitate in removing the partial leaves at left, but I love the small complete cluster!!

[Chris van Rooyen]

Lovely posture and light Ajit. I would consider extending the green background behind the bird?

[Ajit Huilgol]

Chris, how do I do that? :confused:

[Ákos Lumnitzer]

Hi Ajit

Lovely image, I wanted to comment last night, but I also wanted to explain the method to add the canvas etc....

Wonderful pose, albeit the crop's a little square for my taste and the feet are way too close to the bottom of the frame. However, still a gorgeous bird. Now, to add a little canvas all I did was:

1 - Use the PATCH tool to patch the little leaves near the LLC above the perch
2 - Once that happened, I had an even BG to copy, so
3 - Using the CROP tool I selected the entire image, then pulled the square along the left side of the image in the CENTER to the left a little.
4 - Then I pressed ENTER, and voila, the image has been extended along the left side only. Albeit the BG is white (or whatever the default color you have it set to
5 - Using the rectangular MARQUEE tool, I selected a narrow patch directly left from the tip of the tail to the edge of the image where it met the white addition. I selected it at full image height, including the perch
6 - Then once the marquee had a rectangular selection, I pressed CTRL + C to copy, then CTRL + V to paste
7 - Pasting placed this onto a new layer. If you cannot see layers, press F7 and the Layers Palette will show in the LRC of the Photoshop window.
8 - Press the letter V for the MOVE tool, then left-click over the image and hold the mouse button down, and slowly drag to the left. this is where you are supposed to align the edge of the background image and the copied selection
9 - Once you have moved the copied selection into place, click BOTH Background and additional layers while holding shift and you should be able to select both in one click; this will be evident by both layers showing in dark blue, that is they have been selected.
10 - Press CTRL + E to merge the layers
11 - Now, return to the PATCH tool and carefully work your way along the seams
12 - you can also carefully repair the meeting edges of the perch with the patch tool
13 - I did some cloning with a small size brush over the perch seam area AND you can see where I messed up by seeing repetition. :( Anyway, you should be able to attempt now for yourself. :)

Hope it's reasonably easy to follow. Shoot me a PM if you want any more help or something is not clear.

Cheers bhai