Golden-hooded Tanager at nest

[Bill Dix]

Costa Rica in March. I ran into this issue a lot on my CR trip: bright background of filtered sun through tree canopy. This fellow was making frequent trips to his nest. Not sure what he has in his mouth -- a beetle, maybe?

D7000 | 80-400 VR @ 400mm | ISO 1250 | 1/500s @ f/8 | +1.0 EV | HH

[Vivaldo Damilano]

Fantastic detail, colour and eye contact... nicely done Bill TFS:cheers:

[Nancy Bell]

Having just returned from Costa Rica myself I know full well the issues of the bright sun background. You handled it perfectly as far as I can tell. If you do want to lower the brightness of the background a bit you could lower the saturation of the yellows while protecting the yellows in the tanager. Those tropical tanagers are certainly show stoppers!

[annmpacheco]

Oh how swell! I like this very much. The detail is wonderful along with the pose and the head angle.
I appreciate your wonderful image as I just saw this beauty in Panama. My background had blinkies and I didn't get a beetle!. way to go! Ann

[Dave Leroy]

Photo has that under growth feel to it. You handled the awkward exposure very well.

Very sharp and the food item is a nice bonus.

Lovely looking bird in habitat.

Well done.

Dave

[Peter Hawrylyshyn]

Bill
You did very well with the challenging lighting conditions. On my monitor, the tanager and branch almost look a tad too sharp/crisp ( not sure what PS post processing you applied)

If you're not into PS editing of images, then the photo is what it is

Often, one way i've found to help handle the bright bkgd or circular HL's you find in CR (ULC) is some type of blur technique. Topaz has just released Lens Effects, i'm sure there are other similar pgm's on the market. Combined with a mask layer, you can control where you add the effect. The repost just shows Bokeh-Centre Focus applied to the image with a "1 second" mask layer. With a bit more time, could achieve a much better effect. You might chose to leave the moss without any blur

Either way, it's one of the most colorful tanagers in CR - nicely done. Thanks for sharing

PS - Looking back at the OP, not sure the blur works here because of the moss on RHS

[Bill Dix]

Thank you all for looking. I appreciate the feedback and helpful comments.

Peter, I have been known to blur a background or two, but I agree that your repost doesn't quite work on this one. I haven't tried the new Topaz product.

However, I should probably tone down the BG here, maybe using Nancy's suggestion of desatting the yellows.