Kentucky Warbler

[Henry Domke]

Photographed on May 4th at the Prairie Garden Trust.
Called in with a bird song played back on my iPhone.
I was out taking a walk. This was not taken from a blind.

Canon 1D4
Canon 600/f4 IS with 1.4 tele
Mounted on a tripod
ISO 1600
Shutter Speed 1/250
Aperture: f/11


Image worked up in LR3 then Photoshop CS5
A small amount of cloning was done to remove distracting background elements.

[Shawn Zierman]

I like the mix of lighting/shadow in the image. The natural perch and eye level view of the bird is pleasing as well.
Regarding the composition, a consideration might be to crop some from the left, to eliminate the branch in the upper
left hand side of the frame, while at the same time, diminishing the impact of the bright part of the lower branch that
the bird is on (it's brightness does pull the eye a bit). The exposure work looks solid. Your post work may have made the
yellows on the throat and eye line of the bird a bit to bright. Yet I can still see detail in there. Some subtle selective NR
to the background is also worth considering imo.

[Marina Scarr]

Not a bad looking image, although I'd prefer the branch not running through the bird. You have a pretty strong green cast on your image. Try a Color Balance and bring the slider over to the magenta side of the Magenta/Green scale...you will see the difference.

[Henry Domke]

crop some from the left, to eliminate the branch in the upper
left hand side of the frame, while at the same time, diminishing the impact of the bright part of the lower branch

I agree 100%. Thanks for the suggestion!

[Henry Domke]

You have a pretty strong green cast on your image.

I'm not seeing what you are seeing. To double check I used the color sampler tool in Photoshop and checked readings on the most neutral part of the image, the bark. As you can see from the attached screen shot, green is not dominant.


One of the things that I love about the image is the magical green that you see that time of year, just as the leaves have emerged in the forest. It is a very intense green, but it is real.

[Henry Domke]

I followed Shawn's suggestions and cropped some from the left.
I also did a little CCW rotation and darkened some of the hot spots on the branch. I think it helped.
Thanks!

Henry