Believe it or not this is my first ever House Wren image! So common, and there are many images of them out there, but oddly it was a bit of a nemesis bird for me. Perhaps the extra reach was a factor in giving it confidence in approaching the setup log and audio...
Canon 7D + 500mm f4 II + 1.4TC, manual exposure, evaluative metering, 1/640s., f/5.6, ISO 400, handheld, small crop for comp, toned down the yellow saturation in the BG ferns, some areras of the perch darkened via burn tool.
Last edited by Daniel Cadieux; 05-22-2013 at 04:54 AM.
Wonderful shot of a cute little bird. I have yet to see one. Ferns on the left seem a bit blobby (probably not the tech term), or maybe it's because they are horizontal when the rest is vertical? Still nice though.
Daniel, tack sharp with your new gear, congrats! Perfect exposure as usual. The BG is nice, but the dark spot above the bird is a little bit distracting. Well done. Loi
Daniel, a wonderfully sharp image of a house wren. The image gives evidence of how interesting some of our more common birds can be when their image is captured by a skilled photographer. Very sharp, great pose and head angle. The open bill is a huge plus, and I love the natural curve of their the wren's bill. I do agree that a more even distribution of the lighter green in the BG would be a plus.
Hummmm, that background did not bother me. If you wanted to, you could smooth it with Nik tonal contrast. The bird is so sharp and the pose excellent. I agree, for such a tiny little thing, they make much noise and your image captures this species character well.
Nice looking shot of this little loud mouth. Great looking calling pose with a good angle to the sensor. Nice and sharp and exposed well too. Bg noise noted but not bad. Well done and congrats on another one in the books.
Daniel, much as I love everything you post, I have to say the BG here really doesn't help the lovely bird.
I don't know if you are opposed to more than minor cleanups, but since it is a setup, if it were mine, I'd do some work on it. The ferns have a flashed look -- flat light with darker BG. It would be easy to lighten the darkest areas (I would use Nik Viveza), select the bird to exclude it, and do some partial opacity cloning to smooth the remaining detail a lot more.
Here is a quick try, not at all carefully done and didn't select the bird so not fixed near the beak. I went too far here, but just to toss out the idea.
I didn't do any further desaturation here but should have had a look at it.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 05-22-2013 at 11:54 AM.
Hi Daniel,
The IQ of the bird is stupendous. I assume you did the eye doctor stuff? I would back off a bit on it but that is a personal taste observation.
I am OK with the BG but if this was mine (i wish it was) I would desat the greens a bit or go to tonal contrast in Nik Efex and pull the midtones and shadow slider to -50 to soften the BG.
I really like the rounded perch.
I think I see a cloning line just above the Cadieux in your signature. easy fix,
Gail
Thanks guys and gals! Diane, I am not opposed to heavier manipulation such as your repost. Luckily though I have some with a more uniform BG in-camera too, I thought this one was interesting for the "forest floor" feel of the ferns I was going for...but I can see your point(s). The eye is untouched in this one, I was surprised at how prominent the iris is on the House Wren with good light. Reminds my of the Great Crested Flycatcher and a couple of sparrow species.
P.S. Gail, I think you were looking at Diane's repost when noting the clone mark
The ferns are an interesting quandary here. The forest floor look is a good idea and if they had been smaller and more delicate they wouldn't have competed so much. I think they're just at an awkward balance between size, out-of-focus-ness and lack of detail -- just sort of green blobs.
My bad on the cloning -- it was a 37-second job to test the idea. Probably wasn't worth reposting.
No problem -- that's how I read your reply -- I was just apologizing for a quick-and-dirty example. No thin skin here! Give and take makes us all better.
I looked carefully at both images and decided I like the original edit with the ferns in the background. I do not think they take anything away from the bird-on the contrary, they showcase its environment. Otherwise a stunning image and the subject is super sharp, great crop and beautiful light-magic!
I actually prefer your OP Daniel although Diane did a nice job in smoothing the BG. The repost seems to have lost some pop. I love the calling pose and the perch and I actually like the oof ferns in bg
Terrific singing pose -- they really do make a babbling racket don't they. I didn't mind the BG in the OP; I personally preferred it to the repost although I think Gail's suggestion might be worth pursuing. I know what you mean about not getting the common birds; I recently made my first Robin image.
I think Diane's post was in the right direction, just a bit too green and washed out the ferns completely, I would leave some darker areas and leave the ferns alone.
Great pose!
The original rocks in all regards. The background is amazing. It is difficult beyond difficult to achieve
a background effect like that...which is why it is rarely seen on the avian forums....defined and defocused,
and +1 to the forest floor "feel".
Loud House Wren.
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