Sharing a Berry

[Norm Dulak]

D7000 w/Nikkor 28-300mm lens @ 300mm, hand held
ISO equivalent 800; f/5.6, 1/320 sec
Standard CS6 adjustments, Topaz DeNoise

Last fall, when we planted a Service Berry tree (Amelanchier arborea), we were told that our tree would produce red berries that would be of great interest to birds. Several Cedar Waxwings today showed that that was spot on. Shown here are two of the birds, that passed a berry back and forth between them.

Although I am continually impressed by the beauty of birds and enjoy seeing them in all their splendor on a beautiful perch or in flight, I take special delight in observing their behavior. For me, this sharing of a berry between the two Cedar Waxwings was a special moment.

Norm

[Grace Scalzo]

You are right, Norm, a very special moment indeed. I like the angle of the birds as we can clearly see the feeding. I see that you used a denoise filter. There is not much detail in the birds and I wonder if you ran it on them too? I also think that a tighter crop (if your iq holds up) would bring us in to the birds better.

[arash_hazeghi]

the interaction was great but the lack of details and busy contrasty BG worked against you here.

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks, Grace and Arash.

I agree that feather definition could be improved. The problem is that there was no direct light on the birds, and a relatively high ISO was needed to get reasonable shutter speed. Background noise was significant, and NR was applied to the entire image.

If one of you would point me to a good method to selectively apply NR to the background only, I'll rework and repost this image with what I'm certain will be more detail in my subjects.

Norm

[Grace Scalzo]

Norm, I'm not the best at processing. But for noise reduction, I select the bird, refine the edges out a bit, then select the inverse and use NR in Photoshop. Also, the Nik filter is good for noise.I don't know your Nikon converting software, but Canon's DPP is a good place to start with a noisy image as well. Maybe some others will weigh in with their techniques.

[Norm Dulak]

Thanks again, Grace! I've applied NR selectively to the background and have cropped a little tighter, with the result shown here. Feather definition is better, but still not what I'd like. The birds were very active, and I think my shutter speed even with the lens at f/5.6 and at ISO 800 was probably not fast enough.

[Grace Scalzo]

Norm, I think this is noticably better. Such sweet interaction, glad you reworked it. Something went a bit wonky in the lower right corner, looks like an easy fix.