Went out early today for the first time in a week. A very foggy start but I was soon able to photography some birds. Lots of these Sedge Warblers around but they just didn't seem to want to come out from the under growth. I managed a few fairly clear shots.
I know this one has a lot of distractions but I thought it was to much to attempt to clone away. It's a shame about the shadow but again not sure how to remove that, so any advice there and comments would be appreciated.
7D, 500 + 1.4x, tripod, ISO200, 1/1250 ss, f7.1. Processed in LR4 and PSE10. Some noise reduction on the background and USM for sharpening after resize.
I like the singing pose,exposure is good, as is the sharpness. It is possible to really reduce the impact of the shadow with some careful curves work to lighten the shaded area to match the surrounding feathers, use a hide all mask (black) to cover up the adjustment, and then with a low opacity brush to paint on the mask in the areas that are shaded until they match the tones of the rest of the feathers. A bit fiddly, but I did it and it looked pretty good.
The clutter is a bit harder to deal with, but if you go with a vertical crop, you can clone out much of the remaining branches fairly easily.
Nice sharp details, lovely clear eye and singing pose is extra good, difficult shot in amoung the Brambles but I think if these is space top and bottom then a vertical crop to eliminate the oof branch on the left and much of the same on the right would improve a lot
Nice singing pose captured, Simon.
Here is my attempt to remove the shadow.
It is not perfect but with patience you can do a better job.
I used layers, and brush tool and moved the slider until it looked better.
After that I used color replacement tool to improve it further.
Good singing pose, details, exposure. Busy surroundings, yes. Does this species respond to audio and are you OK with using this type of tool? You could get a nifty perch and uncluttered BG and try to lure it on there.
Thanks all for the comments and feedback. I'll give the suggestions a go.
Daniel, I'm fine with using calls however I post elsewhere thatbid used a bird call once to get a wren shot and I got absolutely roasted. They went way over the top. the funny thing is i did actually try that technique on this one but I thought it was a Reed Warbler at the time until I started to process the images. Guess its a classic case of know your species first !
Simon,
Nice capture of this species, I like how Karl removed the shadow. It brings your eye straight to the bird. But still even with the shadow it is a nice crisp image.
Janet
Sedge Warbler
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