Lapland Longspur

[gail bisson]

Another shot from Nome on a cloudy day.
Canon 1DX
600mm and 1.4x
ISO 800/ SS 1/400 /f 5.6
PP: Crop of 30% so 70% FF/ levels/cleaned the beak/ cloned out a bit of wood sticking up where my signature is/ Saturation increase by +6/ NR to BG/ Detail Extractor on bird and log at 3% / USM to JPEG at 40%/0.3 pixels
Comments and critiques always learned from and appreciated with thanks,
Gail

[David Salem]

I love the lichen covered rock, the color matches the nape of the bird. The pose looks great and details look nice and sharp. I feel the head looks a bit dark due to the cloudy day, maybe some selective lightening. Nice work Gail.

[Cheryl Arena Molennor]

David said what I was going to say... pretty much to the t. I think lightening the face would be a great improvement.

[Bill Dix]

What a wonderful bird to capture, and a great setting. Love the lichen-covered rock. Ditto David's suggestions. Were I lucky enough for this to be mine I might try a version cloning out the oof portion of rock behind his back, to make the perch less dominant. But that's probably more PP than you are inclined to.

[gail bisson]

Thanks for the ideas. I really like both suggestions and here is a repost!

[Bill Dix]

Love it! I'm glad you gave it a try. It looks like you were hanging off a cliff to get this one.

PS. My wife looked over my shoulder and loved the OP.

[Shawn Zierman]

I'm impressed with your PS work used to achieve the repost. I like the improved seperation of the subject from the background accomplished with the cloning. The longspur pops better too with your lightening of the face. Along that line of thinking, some fill flash at the time of capture would have been ideal with this light quality. Love the surface textures and colors of the perch.

[Frank Schauf]

Great pose and setting you have here.

[shane shacaluga]

Lovely shot and good work on the RP

I too like the lichen covered perch

TFS

[Daniel Cadieux]

This bird looks great in breeding plumage eh! Love the perch here, and the BG too. Too bad it did not perch a little higher though, but that is asking for alot now! The lighter face does look better in the repost.

[Linda Dulak]

Gail: lovely image with the play of the brown/orange colors. I really like the repost -- good job on the cloning. The lightening of the face was my main comment about the OP and it looks much better now that you can clearly see the eye.

Linda

[Neil Nourse]

Love the perch. Wish for a bit more DOF on the perch, but understand that was not an option with the lighting you had. Your re-post brought this fine image up a notch.

TFS Neil

[Iain Barker]

I like the original post and like the repost even more.
Well done.

I notice a lot of people use detail extractor in the PP. This is not something I have come across before using this site. Is a plugin for Photoshop?

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Gail, love the detail on the bird, sharp, and I do like the colours on both the bird, and surrounding lichen covered perch. The two tone BG looks great too. Your repost has turned out well with regards to lightening the face.

[gail bisson]

Thank you all for your help. For my final version I will keep the lightened face. I am a bit uncomfortable about cloning out the perch though, and will chew on/ mull over my ethics for that one!
David and Bill-The perch is actually an old log on the beach so I was kneeling on the sand to take the shot.
Iain- Detail Extractor is a plug in from Nik Efex for Photoshop.
Daniel- you have no idea how much I tried to coax ( aka pray!) that guy to come out further on the perch!! But I do have a couple of other shots that have a clear view on a slightly different log. Will post them in another thread.
Gail

[Marina Scarr]

Love this image, esp the lichen and the way the bird matches it's perch so well!!! The RP looks great with the lightened face, but I would personally go with the original BG just b/c that's a lot of cloning.

[Jim Crosswell]

I like the pose, perch, lichens, details and composition. Repost looks great. Well done Gail!

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image, Gail with beautiful lights.Wonderful re post.Beautiful colors,nice details,perch and composition.
Seeing this bird for the first time. TFS.

Regards,
Satish.

[David Salem]

The repost looks great Gail. The out of focus background area doesn't bother me though.

David