Orchard oriole

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi All,

I took this shot at Anahuac national wildlife refuge, TX last week.

I first saw the bird while I was throwing trash at the Refugee main office. It saw me and left the Coral bean Plants. After a while I noticed that it kept coming back.

So I set up my tripod and waited for it patiently. After a while it was comfortable with me standing there and it made multiple trips to the plant during which I took this shot.

Nikon D7100, 300mm f/4 with 1.4x Teleconverter
ISO 640, f/5.6, 1/2500 sec

I brought DIGITAL BASICS from Artie and read few pages in the morning. So really liked the content and decided to follow some of the key points mentioned. I used combination of Adobe Lightroom and photoshop elements for post processing this image.

Post processing:-

• Adobe Lightroom
  
  • Exposure correction
  • Minimal Cropping
  
  
• Adobe Element
  
  • Cloning to remove unwanted distractions (branches)
  • Brightness/Contrast Layer
  • Level Layer

Let me know your comments on the same.

Thanks
Krishna

[Glennie Passier]

Very NIce Krishna. Your patience has paid off. I really like the diagonal feel to this. If this were mine, I would take out the OOF branch in front and the little one on the RHS between the two stems and tidy up the edges for little bits. There is one OOF that runs under his tail, that I think would be easy enough to get rid of. The black on the bird just looks a tiny bit heavy. Are you able to raise the exposure a little on the bird.

Well done Krishna!

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Very NIce Krishna. Your patience has paid off. I really like the diagonal feel to this. If this were mine, I would take out the OOF branch in front and the little one on the RHS between the two stems and tidy up the edges for little bits. There is one OOF that runs under his tail, that I think would be easy enough to get rid of. The black on the bird just looks a tiny bit heavy. Are you able to raise the exposure a little on the bird.

Well done Krishna!

Thank you for the comments. I did clone out the flower behind the bird, but forgot to remove the branch. I will make changes and repost it. Somehow I always see the attachment in the thread much darker than JPEG file which I save from Lightroom. Did you guys also notice the same ?

This it is the image before post processing.

[Adhika Lie]

Hi Krishna, beautiful bird, beautiful pose, beautiful perch! Pretty much what Glennie said. Judging from your unprocessed image in Pane #3 and comparing it to the processed one in Pane #1, I think you are heading in the right direction. If you could open up the shadow more on LR/ACR, I think this will be a great shot. And no, I did not notice you cloning out the flower if you didn't show us Pane #3. Great shot! :)

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi Adhika,

Thank you for the feedback. Reposting the image after cloning out he branch.

I imported the modified shot from photoshop elements to Lightroom and increased the shadows by 10.

Thanks
Krishna

[Diane Miller]

Very nice fieldwork to study and wait for the bird. Nice image cleanup, too. But the bird is very underexposed. his is one for fill flash or just let the sky blow out. It's important to get proper exposure on the subject, and very difficult in this case.

LR gives you a lot of leeway in increasing exposure (first) then bringing down Highlights and bringing up Shadows. Did you go as far as you could with those? But as dark as the bird is in the raw file, you'll have noise.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Very nice fieldwork to study and wait for the bird. Nice image cleanup, too. But the bird is very underexposed. his is one for fill flash or just let the sky blow out. It's important to get proper exposure on the subject, and very difficult in this case.

LR gives you a lot of leeway in increasing exposure (first) then bringing down Highlights and bringing up Shadows. Did you go as far as you could with those? But as dark as the bird is in the raw file, you'll have noise.

Thank you for the feedback.

I completely agree. When I saw the shot in the Mac today, there was a hint of sadness/disappointment over the shot. I just kept working on it to make as better as I could. As much as I love to raised the shadows, I really did not like the noise. I completely agree this is a candidate for Fill Flash which I will practice from next week.

Below are my Lightroom adjustments.

[Warren Spreng]

Nice bird Krishna! Others have made good suggestions, and I agree that this is a tough situation to get the exposure correct on the subject with the bright sky in the background.

[Diane Miller]

You did a good job of recovering some detail, considering that the original exposure was very underexposed. Work from the top down. First increase exposure until the bird shows some detail -- you may not be able to get much though in this case. Then raise Shadows. (Raising Exposure will bring out a little less noise than Shadows will.) Lower Blacks only as needed to keep the lightened bird from being too flat -- or try Clarity.

How are you metering? The camera will try to expose for some detail in a white sky which will cause a dark object to be even darker. If you are using Av or Tv, you should be dialing in a lot of + exposure compensation. (Hard to say how much without a quick try.)

I'd remove the small vertical branch in the LR. Not sure about the one below the bird but would probably lose it too.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi Diane,

Thank you for the feedback. I will keep the points in mind. I am still learning about post processing and will keep working on the same.

I am using Matrix Metering. I shoot in manual mode. Getting the right exposure is still something I am trying to figure out. I brought THE ART OF BIRD PHOTOGRAPHY book by Artie recently. I am currently studying it and I think It will help me.

Thanks
Krishna

[Diane Miller]

I find the blinkies are a good and quick estimate of how far my exposure is going toward blowing out whites. But they are from an on-the-fly in-camera JPEG, so keep the settings neutral for the best approximation of what you can work with in LR. If contrast is set too high you will get more blinkies and may not expose to the right as much as you could get away with. That would compromise shadow detail.

It's sort of a black art.

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Hi Diane,

Thank you for the details. After searching a lot. I found the way to turn on Highlights (Blinkies). I absolutely love it.

I will keep it on and start practicing so that I always keep my exposure to the right with out blowing out the whites. I agree it a delicate balance.

Thanks
Krishna

[Krishna Prasad kotti]

Thank you for all the feedback. I am closing this thread