White-crowned Sparrow

[Michael Hansen]

Canon 7D2, 100-400II @ 400mm. ISO 800. 1/250 @ f/5.6.


PP -> Cropped to vertical to (admittedly) avoid dealing with a very bright area for the moment. I have a ton of photos to go through and Photoshop stuff to look up to hopefully help me tame some of the less desirable backgrounds in this series. :) I used Nik and Artie's Color Efex 50/50 recipe. I ended up with a lot more noise than I wanted after that, but, ultimately, fault for that lies with the crop. (Just like when I used to use my 400mm lens like it was an 800mm)


This was just a very tame bird that sat through me taking almost 400 photos of it from every direction. Backgrounds weren't a strong point at this site, but that's where the bird was so... Anyway, the bird was so tame that I figured I'd post something in a show of gratitude so it can have its 15 minutes of fame.




Thanks,
Mike

[Diane Miller]

A nice shot, but the brightness of the BG isn't a strong point. Copping from the top to about halfway to the bird's head would remove some distracting elements.

The most important part of processing occurs in the raw conversion -- some information on what you did there would be helpful.

I would always go for quality over quantity. Shooting 10 images where you maximize control will give you a much better chance of the best result than shooting 400.

[Michael Hansen]

A nice shot, but the brightness of the BG isn't a strong point. Copping from the top to about halfway to the bird's head would remove some distracting elements.

The most important part of processing occurs in the raw conversion -- some information on what you did there would be helpful.

I would always go for quality over quantity. Shooting 10 images where you maximize control will give you a much better chance of the best result than shooting 400.

Hi Diane,

Thanks for your comments and advice!

The reason I didn't share any details regarding the raw conversion was because there was nothing to share (bad boy!). My workflow went like this: Import to LR -> crop -> Dfine -> Color Efex -> Output sharpening -> Export.

I thought I took care of the background problem when I cropped out the brightest spot, but now that you mention it, I see that I did not take care of it. I'll go back, work on that and try one cropping as you suggest. And yeah I agree, the 400 photos were overkill, but I was "guiding" the bird to different backgrounds. I ended up with photos from the 4 cardinal directions, so I have some decent backgrounds to work with...and I stress decent. :) There's a reason why nobody, to my knowledge, is trying to sell IPT tours to look for sparrows in thick brush :)

I have some others that I think are better shots of the bird that I need to work on and that may be more salvageable. I'm looking some stuff up on Photoshop and hopefully I can get something to work.

Thanks again for your help!


Mike

[Diane Miller]

All those adjustment sliders are there in LR/ACR for a reason -- use them! It can make an incredible difference in an image. Otherwise you might as well shoot JPEG with a smart phone camera. Do what you can in raw conversion before trying to improve things in PS. Sometimes you don't need PS at all.

Get this very inexpensive e-book to learn the amazing power of Lightroom's raw conversion engine (same as ACR's except for the interface). It applies to any kind of image, not just landscapes.
http://www.michaelfrye.com/

[Michael Hansen]

I know, I know!!! :( I'm so bad about that. I confess. BUT, I do own this book now -- thanks for the link -- and I'll start reading it now and working on these images. The next couple of days are supposed to be rainy and blah so I'll be able to revisit some older photos. :)

Thanks, Diane! I appreciate it!!


Mike