Bruce,
Very nice picture! I like the pose and composition. It is also very sharp, especially considering it was shot handheld. I also like the glint in its eye.
I think the bright white in the background around the head is a little distracting... I wish it was all the darker green/oof tree trunk. I also might cropping out a chunk of the snow pile in the foreground, or at least try toning down the brightest areas of said snow pile, to further shift the emphasis of the photo to the bird.
Regardless, it is still an excellent photo!
Nice post...very regal pose...beautiful bird and great moment with nature. I agree with Kirk's comment on subject placement. I might remove a small layer from the left better-leveraging the rule of thirds. The background is busy....but sometimes we take what we get...nice detail for a HH shot and the colors are beautiful. You could bump up the ISO to 400 and increase shutter speed to bring out more detail.
Tell me about your post processing workflow...did you sharpen the image?
Nice shot....please keep em coming!
Last edited by Jeff Cashdollar; 06-24-2013 at 05:18 PM.
Thanks for the input guys. I really appreciate the time you took to view and comment. It really helps me learn the overall process of making the best picture that I can.
Kirk - I tend to agree with you regarding the bright spot behind the bird's head. It does distract the eye and brings the photo down because of it. I was hoping the snow pile added to the composition enough to leave it in though perhaps toning it down might be in order.
Jeff - my normal post processing workflow is to develop the RAW in ACR (I remove all sharpening settings in this stage) and bring into Photoshop (currently using CS5). This particular shot I did some very minor shadow/highlight adjustment to bring up the detail in the jay and tone down the snow (apparently I should have taken the snow down more). I'll usually then run noiseware on the background (seldom do I like to use noise reduction on the bird itself). Finally, I use PS smart sharpen before outputting for the web as a jpg. I'm always interested in learning a better workflow (my current workflow seems to be highly dependent on the shot itself and therefore I spend far too long processing each picture). I've almost pulled the trigger several times on Artie's Digital Basics and the two APTATS CDs. Do you have any input here?
Stellar Jay in Winter
Posting Permissions
