Wow! You've got some beauties down there! You have the birds attention and it's a nice pose he has given you. I like the diagonal perch. I would be tempted to crop a little off the bottom to get rid of the bright green LHS leaf and some other untidy bits and a little off the top, around where the OOF stick stops. There is a few little distracting bits of twigs that I might like to clone out and tidy up the left over apricot on his beak. I might have a look lightening around the base of his beak, under his chin. Did you use a tripod? Is the image cropped? I can see a bit of halo-ing around the BG leaves and branches.
Take everything I suggest with a grain of salt Frank. I'm in the ETL for a reason! and critiquing is a brilliant way to learn.
Thanks for advice Glennie and i have to say that i agree with all of it. The shot was hand held no way to use a tripod the bird was wandering all round the tree it did not stay in one spot for more than a few seconds at a time. It is cropped about 40%.
Cheers Frank.
Hi Frank. You do have an eye for color. I especially appreciate how the colors on the bird are restated by the leaves, the reds and the greens. What do you think of increasing the exposure one stop to put the emphasis on the bird? I'm trying to learn to do that, and it's something that's difficult for me to remember in the excitement of the shoot. I'm eager to see more of your work.
That's one handsome dude! Let us know when you decide to start running workshops in your back yard!
Could you tell us how you did the raw adjustment? That's as important as the shooting data.
Glennie brought up a lot of good points -- think I'll hire you for an assistant! Then I can just pop in and say I agree!!
For me, the contrast is a bit high -- if you're using LR or ACR, there is a lot of leeway in the Basic sliders, with "Contrast" being the last one I'd use. There is a lot of shadow and highlight detail to be found with those two sliders. Exposure in a case like this is always a compromise, with a darker subject and a brighter sky.
Here's a quick suggestion, but since it's already a rasterized (non-raw) file, I used Nik's Detail Extractor (in Color Efex Pro). Not ideal on a JPEG but just to show the possibility. The adjustments should be done on the raw file. And of course how you see it will depend on how well calibrated your monitor is. And be careful of the angle at which you're viewing if that causes variation.
The image is also in AdobeRGB color space. That's good for working, but you should convert to sRGB for web posting, for more viewers to see things as correctly as possible. Check my tutorial in the Educational Resources forum.
Last edited by Diane Miller; 12-27-2015 at 01:58 PM.
I can't remember what post i did on the original but i will keep a record from now on (promise)
Opened the original RAW file in LR (first time using lightroom) and the pic looked good to my eye without any adjustments I just got rid of the chromatic aberation round the leaves
Opened in PS cropped, lightened a little under his chin with the sponge tool.I decided to do another crop on the left hand side. Cleared everything away above the perch using clone stamp tool this left it looking rather patchy so i selected the entire area with the magic wand and filed using content aware. Resized for the web in LR. I know that it is far from perfect but for the firs time doing this sort of thing I am quite happy with the result.
Cheers Frank
OK -- good work. Coupla hints: Not sure what lens this is but the depth of field look dicey, dropping off sharply at mid-breast. Not the lens -- something you did in processing.
No percentage in trying to clean up a BG that much -- the selection of the bird is too sharp-edged. At least feather it.
Thanks Diane for all your help on this. The lense was a Nikon 150-300 but I think it was the operator not the lense I took this using the focus mode i was using before you advised me to change. I will keep working on it but I am going to put it aside for a little while and come back to it with fresh eyes.
Cheers Frank
Musk Lorikeet
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