keeping an eye on the competition

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys

Same situation as my post two days ago... Still perched on top of the ladder shooting over the back fence...

1D4 and 500 F4 + 1.4 hand held..
1/4000 @ F5.6, ISO 1600

PP using levels in ACR and a bit NIK sharpening. About 80% of frame..

[keith mitchell]

Don as soon as I see I see these birds I think of Magnetic Island in that wonderful country of yours ,must get back over before the age thing gets the better of me.Beautiful colours and a cracking pose and a bonus Bee it does not get better.

Cheers Keith.

[Arthur Morris]

Spectacular bird and flower. First a question: do you have more room all around?

[Shantanu Ambulgekar]

wow...awesome capture...nice colors... Nice details..even hone bee is also in focus..great work..

[Nancy Bell]

Colors are extraordinary, both on the lorikeet and the bottle brush! Great pose showing off those rainbow of colors & nice eye and feather details. I agree with Artie, could use more space, especially at the top to include the tail tip and on the right side to include the rest of the flower. You might want to consider cloning away that small dark corner in the lower left, and the dark petal extending from the back of the head of the bird.

[Don Railton]

Firstly, thanks to all for your comments.

Artie and Nancy, attached is the full frame as exported from ACR to PS... You can see I don't have enough above to include the virtual tail unfortunately (assuming that's were you were heading..), I thought that part of the image was overly 'messy' anyway I thought and I cropped to try and draw attention to the bird eyeballing the bee... I do have other frames where the flower is complete and I contemplated adding canvas to the right and grafting to complete the flower. Time was against me however as I posted late last night and I was overly brief with my comments and intent, sorry about that.

Best regards

DON

[Arthur Morris]

Thanks Don. Yes, I was looking at the clipped tail and the clipped flower. One big step back would have done wonders. Seeing the full frame I'd sculpt away the tip of the tail to give it a fraction of an inch of leaf behind it. I had no idea that the bird had such a long tail. Grafting the flower would be difficult.....

IAC, a wonderful image of a gorgeous bird in a great setting.

[Don Railton]

Thanks again for the comments Artie... Not sure if you looked at the earlier post but I was perched on a ladder set up next a pool for this shot. Unfortunately one step back would have made a splash... I could have removed the tc but not while on the ladder. Best bet is a reshoot, these birds are common on OZ.

Best regards
Don.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Stu Bowie]

Hi Don, love the splash of colours throughout the image, and I do like the inverted pose from the bird. The presence of the bee puts this up a few notches.

[Daniel Cadieux]

I much prefer this one to the previous. Bummer about the needed space, but still more impact than the other one. Great colours and sharpness, not to mention the pose and competition!

[Don Railton]

Thanks Daniel and Stu.. I have others with a complete flower but alas, the bee has buzzed off... as you might imagine there is a lot of competition amongst various bird species and the flowers are rocking all over the place in the action... hard to frame.

[Jim Crosswell]

Excellent image Don! I like the upside down pose, colours, sharpness, flower and bee adds interest.