Yellow Bellied Sapsucker
Gotta love the name, this is the male, on a tree that they would frequent every day that I visited. The male and the female would take turns feeding the young from this tree. Sunny morning but the bird was in deep shade. I removed a small vine that was in front of the birds beak and neck, and some other OOF branches since he was fairly buried in the thick brush. Added canvas at the top. Canon T3i, Tamron 150 - 600mm, 600mm, HH, AF, ISO 800, f/6.3, 1/320
Nice "closeup" of an interesting pose. And an interesting name! I've never seen one, but the reds and blacks seem to have a blue cast, undoubtedly from the shade. That's something I would choose to correct, to an extent.
There is a shadowy outline around the lower part of the trunk and bird's back, against the light BG. Maybe from tonal adjustment? Would be nice to darken the lightest BG areas, if possible.
I'll check the raw for that blue tone, the shadowy outline comes from some cloning on some interfering OOF branches that I'll try to clean up. Thanks for the suggestions!Originally Posted by Diane Miller
Most likely the blue cast it is in the raw file. Depending on how the white balance is set (a preset or auto) it usually needs some tweaking. If auto, the camera can only guess. If a preset, it's you doing the guessing, but at least it's consistent across a shoot if the lighting remains the same. On auto, the WB can change with zoom, as the camera is seeing a different mix of colors. The more monochromatic a scene gets, the worse the guess.
Good info to keep in mind, I keep the white balance on auto, I'll need to play with presets in different situations to see what works best for my setup.
I use Auto much of the time. Sometimes Daylight when I'm in bright, midday sun and I want a series of shots to match as closely as possible. Shooting astro, I set Daylight as I've read that gives truer star colors. I haven't had good results with the others -- it's easier to find a balance I like in Lightroom for the first shot in a series taken in the same light, and then just Sync to the other frames. (Select all, have the adjusted frame the "most selected" and hit Sync (in the Develop module).
Sometimes when convenient, such as a birds-on-the-deck setup, I'll shoot a gray card (in the same light as the birds) and then use that in LR to establish a WB and then sync the others to it. It's easy, but I have three gray cards and they are all slightly different in color!
Good suggestions, and yes, for astro you use daylight since you want to calibrate to a G2 star like our sun which is 5800 K
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