White Breasted Nuthatch

[JustinSchnee]

Got this one out of the window today by a feeder in my front yard.


Cloned out a chain from suet feeder on the. Basic exposure adjustments in LR4, selectively boosted contrast in the bird and log, sharpened bird via High-Pass filter. Think the background needs some work just everytime I try to do something I make it worse, would like to move around a bit but Im stuck shooting out of one window in the house. 4

Nikon D7000, 200-400 f/4 w/ 1.4TC at 550mm, 1/160, f/8

[Akshay Charegaonkar]

I like the head angle and the sharpness. But I feel the wooden branch is overwhelming the bird just a bit. Perhaps you could move the crop to the right, to get less of the branch and more of that lovely green background?

[Raybel Robles]

I think the light seems to be a bit harsh aswell. You can try lowering the highlights a bit in Photoshop?

[JustinSchnee]

heres take number #2

[Jeannean Ryman]

I like your second crop better. I took your photo and selected just the bird and branch, inverted it, did a round of noise reduction, then inverted it back to the bird/branch and did a curves adjustment bring down the highlights and mid-tones. I'm curious why you used a high pass filter to sharpen it? From my experience, it's not as good a method as many others available in LR and CS.

[JustinSchnee]

thank you for your reply. highpass sharpening to me seems a little more non destructive as I can stack layers when selective sharpening instead of multiple passes of UM on already sharpened areas

[Kerry Perkins]

Justin, good catch on this flighty little bird. I agree that the perch is pretty overwhelming in the original, but the repost is a much better crop. I'm not sure why you would add contrast to a subject shot in direct sun, it only blows out the details and color even more than they already are due to the hash light. What you need to do in these situations in lower the contrast and bring up the color. High-pass sharpening is one of the best sharpening tools in the box, I use it on pretty much every image but then I follow it with some USM to finish the job. Here is my take on your repost, lowering the contrast and midtones with a curves adjustment then adding another round of high-pass sharpening and a light pass of USM. The original does not look sharp to my eye. Good job overall, keep them coming!