Spotted this Curved-bill Thrasher under a tree on a recent morning walk along the canal bank by my house. It was nice enough to pose for a few shots before hopping down and continuing it's foraging. As always, comments, suggestions, and critiques are most welcome. Exif: Nikon D7000/500mm f/4-P@1/1250, f/5.6, ISO 640, on tripod/gimbal head processed in LR 4 and CS 5.
Your capture of the thrasher was quite nice, and I like that the background is so out of focus. I offer two suggestions for your considerations.
With the bird looking to the right and having that long curved bill, it makes sense to have plenty of room in that direction. If there were some other point of interest to the right, I'd probably not want to change the framing of the image. However, with such a large, fairly empty space, cropping some from the right seemed appropriate. I brought it in until a vertical divine proportion line was centered on the thrasher's eye.
When photographing in the wild, backgrounds are often not the best in one way or another. I like its soft, abstract look in your post. However, I pretty much live in the Out of the Box forum and don't hesitate to change almost anything. In this case, I tried to make the color of the background enhance the subject without changing any of the colors of the bird or the perch. To guide the color selection, I found the complement of a color in the thrasher's underside and used it in Image>Replace Color with a reasonably high amount of Fuzziness.
Greetings. Nice thrasher shot. I've been trying to get a good clear shot of a California Thrasher for years (they are quick to flee and are happy deep in bushes). I like the color & comp of the OP, particularly the bg. Good Show!
Hello Jeannean , Beauty ,this one . I do like the tighter crop , of Mr. Bishop's re-post . My question though is , If you're going to change the Bg ,(With the school of thought ,Light advances and darkness retreats ) shouldn't the Bg be darker than the subject ?.....Now I fully KNOW Mr. Bishop IS far more advanced than I ,thus why I Ask ?
Jeananne, this is another beautiful image. Tough call on the crop, both seem to work though I do favor the longer aspect ratio of the first. Again, the minimalist background just sets this off wonderfully. Tough to ask for a better pose on that perch as the flowing lines would be disrupted.
Thanks all. As I said in another thread, I'm not that good at crops, so tend to leave them in the original ratio. I need to practice/experiment with cropping, so this might be a good one to work with. Dennis thanks for your "out of the box" rendition. You're PP skills are far more advance than mine!
Hello Jeannean , Beauty ,this one . I do like the tighter crop , of Mr. Bishop's re-post . My question though is , If you're going to change the Bg ,(With the school of thought ,Light advances and darkness retreats ) shouldn't the Bg be darker than the subject ?.....Now I fully KNOW Mr. Bishop IS far more advanced than I ,thus why I Ask ?
There are many guidelines that tend to be regarded as rules. I try to use them when appropriate, and a lot of that is subjective. Everything else being equal, lighter objects tend to appear closer. How much closer likely depends on the difference in tone between the light and dark. In addition, warm tones tend to appear closer than cool tones.
Both the thrasher and its perch contain a range of tones, but -- on average -- they're probably a little bit on the darker side of halfway between white and black. That means the background would have to be really dark to make the bird and perch enough lighter to make a difference. If you look at color, both of them are pretty much a mix of grays and browns. On the cool/warm scale, they're pretty close to the middle -- perhaps a little on the warm side because of the browns. The original background has both warm and cool tones, but it's probably a bit on the warm side, too, overall. The bluish background is definitely on the cool side of midway, so there's a contrast between the coolness of the background and the neutral/warm tones of the bird and perch, and it works to make the warmer bird and perch appear closer.
At least those are my thoughts. Remember, though, we don't all see things the same way.
The composition is solid just look at the balance in the frame - wonderful!
Was it a bit underexposed is there data in the last two stops on the histogram or did you make any exposure adjustment. What was the white balance setting and time of day? Just asking, this is a nice image and I like the warm colors?
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 11-13-2012 at 06:29 PM.
Jeaneann- Here's an alternative-Squares aren't for everyone as not many images work well cropped this way (IMO), but I feel this one does. I also like the 5x7 AR for this scene, similar to Dennis' crop with a bit more on the edges.
Was it a bit underexposed is there data in the last two stops on the histogram or did you make any exposure adjustment. What was the white balance setting and time of day? Just asking, this is a nice image and I like the warm colors?
It was underexposed by about a half stop and I adjusted that in LR with +.45. While the histogram was pretty flat to the left, there was some data from edge to edge (although not much on the left side). White balance in camera was set to Auto (I left it to "As shot" in LR) and the temp recorded was 4600 +11. Time of day was early morning. The thrasher was sitting under a tree, so was shaded. The background was just dirt and some grass and was quite a bit brighter (full sun/no shade) than the bird, although the bird did have the benefit of low level light coming in from the sun. I've been shooting with Auto WB all along, so will start experimenting with a custom WB because I'm often not happy with the WB in my photos, and this causes me a lot of indecision in PP (trying to reproduce the correct colors as I saw them).
Thanks for the explanation of the color choices Dennis. Very interesting as I didn't know this. Randall, thanks for the crop suggestions! I appreciate all the input I get from you all. :)
Jeannean - wonderful image with very nice detail and exposure. I think you nailed everything on it, IMO. I'm partial to the longer aspect ratio crops, but I would crop in from all sides on the original (keeping the aspect ratio the same). Otherwise, stunning shot!
Here's the repost with Miguel's crop suggestion. (cloned out a small piece of the perch on the bottom that seemed to be coming from no where after the crop)
Curved-bill Thrasher
Jeannean Ryman thanked for this post
Originally Posted by Clyde Hopper
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