SHARP TAILED GROUSE

[gary ellwein]

Grouse activity on the leks is early this year due to a warm and dry winter. This image was captured on March 22. Normally the lek is snow covered on this date. The image was captured from my truck which functioned as a blind. The truck is reflected in the grouses eye. This image was captured at first light with a thin high overcast.

Nikon D810, Nikkor 200-400, f4, 1/500, iso 1600, routine PP with heavy Gaussian blur applied to distracting bg.

[arash_hazeghi]

the bird is great, love everything about it but the BG is extremely unnatural looking. unfortunately applying Gaussian blur to the BG doesn't work as it makes it look very synthetic.


best

[Bill Dix]

Bird looks great. Nice colors and detail, and I love the truck.

[Alan Murphy]

Nice detail. Some masking issues on the BG by the birds breast. I would warm this up too.

[gary ellwein]

Thanks for the critiques. The redo incorporates the recommended corrections.

[Andreas Liedmann]

Hi Gary how does this look like ? enough "natural" looking BG ?

Cheers Andreas

[gary ellwein]

Thank you Andreas. I like it.

[Satish Ranadive]

Excellent image of beautiful bird with beautiful bird and nice details. Reposit in #6 looks great.
Seeing this bird for the first time, would love to see profile image. TFS.

Regards,
Satish.