Chestnut-backed Chikadee

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Greetings. Frequent visitor to the feeder that is nonetheless hard to capture - size, speed and blacks and whites together. Nik Silver Efex for detailing luminance, a couple passes of Topaz Simplify to accentuate the detail (BuzSim with low simplify size, feature boost, fine lines), Topaz Clean to degrunge the bg... Perhaps, not so ootb in appearance...



Thanks for looking.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Arthur Morris]

Love this species. Have you tried setting up an attractive perch in ideal light near the feeder? The large specular highlights are distracting.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Very sharp Michael, and these are one of my favourite birds, though we just have black-capped up here. For me there are a lot a competing elements here that are vying for attention.

[Nancy Bell]

A darling little dude! Maybe a bit too centered in the frame. Since he is looking left, I would suggest having the bird more on the right. Good that the bkgd immediately behind the bird is mostly green, and most of those large white highlights do not intersect with the bird. If you do crop from the right, that would remove the largest and most bright of the highlights. Nice pose and sharp eye! BTW, OOTB covers a wide range of approaches and thus gives us lots of variations to look at.

[Diane Miller]

I was about to say what Nancy just said. A cutie, and I love the processing!

[Randall Farhy]

A nice capture in difficult light with good details. Agree with comments above-cropping should help. Also, the blacks seem a little washed out, mostly on the bird. Nicely seen using an unusual processing technique.

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Artie, Jackie, Nancy, Diane, Randall,

Thanks so much for your comments. I took a stab at mitigating some of the issues... primarily toning down the specular highlights along with the crop. Masked solid fill layers to shift color and flatten the contrast, Silver Efex with luminance blend to adjust contrast and detail, Topaz Clean to degrunge (smooth) bg.



I think this one looks best with Firefox (Explorer oversaturates)...

Artie, the back yard is a project for light & bg ;-)...

Thanks again for the comments.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Jackie Schuknecht]

I think the repost looks better Michael. Much more focus on the bird. Good job with toning down the bokeh. Have you ever tried surface blur to smooth the BG?

[Michael Gerald-Yamasaki]

Jackie,

Thanks for the comment and the suggestion. I've tried surface blur and generally use Gaussian. Just discovered the degrunge settings in Topaz Clean. I find I'm liking the interface in Clean (zooming, larger preview, other processing options). The actual output is similar to my eye so far. Not wild about PS interfaces.

Cheers,

-Michael-

[Cheryl Slechta]

Hi, Michael, the repost is perfect. I love chickadees

[Dennis Bishop]

I think cropping from the right was a good idea for composition and because it was the bokeh there that distracted me. I didn't mind it all in the rest of the image. It's a great shot of the chickadee. I like the backlighting.