Yellow-headed Blackbird

[David Salem]

Captured this last spring at a local pond. This breeding male was a great subject and I spent many hours watching and photographing him. Never noticed the yellow vent feathers until this shot. Caught him as he is just about to take off.

7D---700mm---f5.6---ss1/3200---ISO400---car as blind w/BLUBB@ 8:30am---25% crop

Thanks as always for looking and for your input. Appreciated.

David

[Shawn Zierman]

Great pose(!) and I must say, this is the first time I've ever seen the yellow plumage on the underside....cool.
The image is just fine as is, but I could also envision a version with the subject placed a little further to
the right with a kind of over-emphasis on the negative space to the left.

[John Cooper]

Yes David, it looks like take-off is imminent - you captured the moment nicely. Very attractive gold & balck plumage and the bird is well portrayed against that soft BG. I like the composition as is.

[Satish Ranadive]

David:
Nice looking bird with lovely golden colors on black.Very nice pose captured.
I like the composition and BG too.

Regards,
Satish.

[christopher galeski]

like the pose and BG,dont know if you ran some noise reduction on the bird,but on my screen,can not see much detail in the feathers.thanks.

[Mike Landwehr]

David, you've certainly captured a lovely bird in an interesting position. I like the background, the soft light, and the black and gold colors feather colors. The bird's position, as it prepares for take-off, adds a lot of interest. I'm fine with the composition. The bill and eye are sharp. I'm not seeing the IQ I would expect in the feathers (or legs and feet, or perch). It's almost a painterly look--which is fine, if that was your goal. May I ask what "25% crop" means for this image? (There doesn't seem to be a standard definition for crop percentages these days!)

[Don Nelson]

Interesting pose.
The image has very low IQ. Large crop? or something else going on (NR?) that is impacting the IQ.

[Stu Bowie]

Hi David, the blacks and yellows go well together, and well exposed on both. Good pre-take off pose, and agree taking a bit off the RHS wont harm the image. Yes to a lovely smooth BG too. I do feel the underside of the bird looks like some NR slipped into the area.

Hope you got the take off shot like your owl image.

[Miguel Palaviccini]

Very nice timing and capture. I agree that the IQ isn;t top-notch. Is it a heavy crop?

[arash_hazeghi]

nice pose and colors. BG and light are great too. I also agree IQ has suffered this happens usually if you apply too much noise reduction or if it is a heavy crop.

[David Salem]

Thanks everyone for the comments and input. Looks like I did a few things wrong last night. First, I thought I was cropping about 25% (leaving about 75% of the image) but I cropped from a already cropped copy. More like a 60% crop from the original.
The second thing is when I looked at the original I saw that the blacks werent exposed well and I had to work the shadows and lighten. Both led to this image being less than perfect. Here is the original. Posted it because I like the pose too.
Thanks again

[arash_hazeghi]

If that's the original the exposure ain't that bad at all. And that's not a big crop for web presentation so if focus was sharp it should look better. My guess is noise reduction and RAW conversion is at fault. What do you use for processing your RAWs?

[gail bisson]

I love the pose but am trying to figure out why the bird lacks so much detail.
When I owned my 7D I used to find that some shots came out like this. Just not a good enough sensor to pick up details in the blacks.I also think the face is soft and that is either motion blur or not focused perfectly on the head.
I will leave it to the experts to advise you on this one!
Gail

[Bill Dix]

The soft feather detail was the second thing I noticed -- looks like NR on the bird but maybe focus? The first thing I noticed was the great pose and comp. I'll bet you could go back and tweak some more detail out of the yellow and blacks. ( just downloaded a copy of Topaz Detail 3 for $27.00. I don't know if it works as well as the Detail Extractor in Color Efex Pro -- I've only had literally a few minutes to play with it -- but something like that might be helpful.)

[dankearl]

This is not your usual IQ, so I assume something went wrong in PP?
Nice pose.

[David Salem]

Thanks everyone for the input and helpful comments. Arash thanks for the help. I was using PS to process my images but read on some sites and your info that it wasnt optimum for my Canons. I now use DPP and like the conversion better. This shot was with PS
Also I used the dodge tool on this one to try to bring out more in the blacks and I obviously jacked it up. Thanks again.

[arash_hazeghi]

Thanks everyone for the input and helpful comments. Arash thanks for the help. I was using PS to process my images but read on some sites and your info that it wasnt optimum for my Canons. I now use DPP and like the conversion better. This shot was with PS
Also I used the dodge tool on this one to try to bring out more in the blacks and I obviously jacked it up. Thanks again.

Hi David,
The DPP RAW conversion guide that I prepared with Artie will certainly help with images like this. It takes less than 30 min to read and master. Hope you will give it a try and let us know how it worked!