Haven't posted here in quite a while. Here is a photo of a Barn Swallow I took last summer. I crouched a little lower than the bird to get the look I wanted. Not sure if it works or not.
Shooting Info: Canon 60D, 300mm f/4L IS + 1.4x, 1/640 sec, f/6.3, ISO 800, hand-held
I love the bird and it's a cute pose, the background is nice and smooth as well. One element that overpowers the bird I think is the huge perch (rope), but you can't do much about that. Because of the head angle, I would probably try selectively lightening up around the closest eye a little. In general the bird looks a tad dark, especially against the generally bright BG.
Regards,
Kevin
Thanks for the comments. I tried looking at this post via my mobile phone and the bird does look dark especially in the face area. I guess I need to have my monitor calibrated.
A lovely shot -- I like the DOF and sharp detail on the bird. And I like that the rope goes OOF on the left. That makes it compete with the bird less.
It is dark -- a good monitor is important, but calibrated vision is also important. I like to do comparisons with several images, in Bridge or LR or the like, which helps me compare overall exposure. And of course the histogram helps.
You don't give your processing -- You could bring up more detail in the bird while holding down the BG by use of the Highlight and Shadows sliders in ACR 7 or LR 4 or later, unless you have already pushed them as far as is practical.
Thanks for the tip Diane. I really haven't tried those Highlight and Shadows sliders. From RAW, I usually just press Auto and then adjust the Recovery and Blacks to minimize the "blinkies" and do minor sharpening. After final crop, I just adjust the Levels and move the middle pointer to lighten or darken the image and then apply some Unsharp Mask. That's basically my workflow.
I don't want to sound curt but I'm in a rush -- but if you're doing that you might as well be shooting in JPEG. And if you have a Recovery slider, you need to update to the latest version -- the new Shadows and Highlights sliders are amazing in their highlight and shadow recovery abilities.
Check Michael Frye's website for his e-book on "Landscapes in Lightroom 5" (Applies also to LR4) for information on how to process an image in LR, which applies equally to ACR.
OK! I'm back with another 37 seconds of time. The last issue (Jan-Feb) of Digital Photography Magazine (www.dpmag.com) has an article by Tom Bol on his Lr/ACR processing.
Barn Swallow
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