Printable View
This was captured on Enderby Island about 2 years ago. I went wide open for this one since I had no way to get a very distant background (not allowed off the boardwalk at this point on the island), so going for the shallow depth of field. Maybe 3.2 or 4 would have been better and have the feet and tail, but I can't go back for a redo.
400mm, 1/1250, f2.8, ISO250. Processed in Lightroom.
Greg
I like it wide open as that colorful BG looks nice and painterly. The important parts of this beauty are sharp with plenty of detail and I love the in focus ground/grass below. Maybe just a tad off the right side. TFS
The pose and composition is nice. The depth of field looks pretty good.
Neat bird. Is the breast band complete rich chestnut in full breeding plumage? The d-o-f is not a problem at all for me as what needs to be sharp is sharp. For the repost I did some BKGR smoothing with the Patch Tool, Content Aware Fill, and a Gaussian Blur refined with a Hide-all Mask. The head angle is a bit off as the bird is angled toward us but the head is not.
with love, artie
ps: all the Photoshop stuff and tons more is detailed in the BAA Current Workflow e-Guide, aka DB II.
nice frame Greg, sharp and clean, it shows the bird and its habitat I like Artie's repost. If mine I'd tone down or blend in the OOF twigs in the lower left corner a bit more.
TFS
Thanks all for the critiques, and the repost Artie. I have seen pictures with a much richer full breeding plumage, really broad chestnut band, but I also read that the bands are less prominent on the females. Can't say...
