Yellow Warbler high-key

[Bill Dix]

Sandy Hook on Tuesday, mid morning. Had finished trying to find warblers for the day, and climbed up one of the old concrete gun emplacements to have my bagel and coffee before heading home, when this lass appeared in the nearby tree right at eye level, looking for little green inchworms. I'd be interested in hearing what others have to say about this image before I offer my self-critique.

D90 | 80-400 VR @ 400mm | ISO 400 | 1/1250s @ f/7.1 | 0EV | HH

[Don Railton]

Beautiful Bill... I like the Hi key look and the tatty leaf adds heaps in my view.

DON

[Indranil Sircar]

Very nice composition, Bill. I love the hk look. The exposure and the colors are great. Compositionally, I like the front pair of leaves; not sure if the leaf on the right edge adds to the image. Would wait to see what others think about it. I also wish the lighting was more uniform. It seems to be filtered and focused on the back wing. Still a great image and TFS.

[Julie Kenward]

I love the overall composition, Bill. The tattered leaves really tell a story here against such a beautiful bird. You've got a lovely HA - might try bringing a little more detail up in the catch light if you can.

I also see where the light is focused on that back wing - not a hard fix. Viveza would be a great way to bring up the darker areas and tone down the bright ones but you can always use masks and/or blend modes to achieve a more uniform look - providing the lighting here bothers you in some way.

This is what I call a "freebie" image - you weren't expecting to get it and then it ends up being your favorite of the day. You not only got lucky, you maximized that luck with a nice exposure and a beautiful posture/pose.

[Lance Peters]

Hi Bill - love the high key -- Is it just my eye's or does the belly area seem to have less detail than some of the other area's??
There also appears to be a bit of a green edge to the upper right hand section of the branch - Reflected light?
Like the composition and the leaves - tells a story.
Good Show.

[Bill Dix]

Thank you Don, Indranil, Jules and Lance. Time for full disclosure. As some of you noticed, there are some issues here. First of all, I was of two minds about the RH leaf; I like the leaf itself and the tension where it almost touches the adjacent twig, but it does distract from the bird. I tried a version without it, but decided I liked it better as posted. The real problem here is twofold: the uneven light coming in from the left and only hitting a small portion of the bird, the balance of the bird being in heavy shade at 10:30 AM; and the fact that I wasn't thinking high-key when I shot this. It was grossly underexposed as shown in this image straight out of the camera. I added +1.5 stops in RAW transfer, which I should have done in the camera if I had been thinking. This led to the lack of detail in the breast area, the green edge to the branch, and other issues. Since I really liked the pose, I was pleased to recover as much as I did using s/h, dodge and burn and cloning, and I could probably even out the lights and darks a little more as Jules suggests; but can't recover the missing detail to match that where the light was hitting her. (In other words, no silk purse from sow's ear.) Anyway, I appreciate the comments and suggestions.

[WIlliam Maroldo]

Hi Bill! I realy like your "full disclosure" and wish there would be alot more of it here!!! It would be incredibly usefull here at ETL.., especially with images that show alot of noise or there is something odd going on.
As far as your image goes, pretty good attempt at creating high key from an underexposed image! One thing I almost always do to high key images for web presenation is create a 1 pixel black border, since the image tends to blend into the web page background, and this is not a good idea compositionally speaking.
By the way, did you use noise reduction? Lightening up underexposed images almost always, in my experience at least, creates a substantial noise penalty. Regards~Bill