Eye of Lorikeet (C)

[Jim Poor]

I went back and forth on whether to put this here or in OOB. A close crop of a macro image of a Lorikeet made at Busch Gardens a few weeks ago.

I'd like to move the eye a little closer to an ROT point, but any direction I move reveals ugly BG, and cropping tighter looses too much blue or yellow.

Cropped, sharpened, saturated a little.

Camera Make: NIKON CORPORATION

Camera Model: NIKON D3

Image Date: 2008:04:19 16:30:01

Flash Used: No

Focal Length: 105.0mm (35mm equivalent: 105mm)

Exposure Time: 0.0080 s (1/125)

Aperture: f/3.5

ISO equiv: 200

Exposure Bias: -1.00

White Balance: Auto

Metering Mode: Matrix

Exposure: aperture priority (semi-auto)

Comment: (C)JIM_POOR

[Robert Amoruso]

Actually Jim, IMO this should be in Macro - but that is up to the forum moderators to determine.

The eye placement is OK with me and I like how the feathers wrap around it - remember the car commercials with them in wind tunnels and smoke going over and under them like and airfoil? Same look here and it is cool.

The problem is the lack of DOF and the unsharp eye. The eye needs to be sharp in my estimation even if all the feathers are not. Trying to get all the image sharp would be my goal.

[Dan Brown]

Hi Jim. I love the feather detail. I agree with the eye sharpness. The lower left area seems too dark. I sharpened the eye and some of the green and yellow feathers with Nik Sharpener pro selective. I also brightened the lower left with Shadow/hightlights. This produced a little noise, so I reduce it with Noise Ninja.

Just for fun, I ran an illustration action on your jpg and it is really cool, but I don't think I can post it here (or at all, as it is your image). The illustrated version would be appropriate in Out of the Box.

Dan Brown

[Jim Poor]

Thanks guys.

I'd like to see the illustrated version too. I don't have any illustration actions to try it out :(

[Dan Brown]

Here it is. Hope I don't get in trouble! I used Seeram's illustration full version and then tweaked the saturation and cloned out some hot spots. Dan

[Jim Poor]

That's really cool. I suppose you could have E-mailed it to me. Personally, I wouldn't care if you posted it in OOB since I asked :D

I'll have to look into that action.

Thanks
Jim

[Lana Hays]

Jim
A cool macro view of the feather detail. This one.....just as the above post illustrates......some of the cool things that you can do with an image. I see all sorts of creative ideas. I like it because it's really got me thinking. Maybe you should post it over in Out of the Box and let others use it to create something.

[Jim Poor]

Yeah, I think I'll do that.

[Doug Brown]

I really like what you've done with this photo Dan. Jim's photo has lots of potential, but there are no easy fixes. By turning it into a painting, you preserve the images strengths and take away its weaknesses beautifully.

[Dan Brown]

Thanks Doug. Did you follow the thread over to Out of the Box - Have at it :D

Dan Brown